Marines, Open Fire!
by azndreamwriter
Summary: Halo/Code Lyoko. The UNSC is desperate, fighting a war on two fronts. The future of humanity looks bleak, as the Covenant slowly glasses planet after planet. On Corasis, the rebels are hiding a dangerous secret, one that might doom them all.
1. Chaos

Disclaimer: I don't own Code lyoko or Halo.

Okay, here's some background info to let you know what's going on.

Ulrich: Drafted into the Marine core. He's currently in charge of an ODST (orbital drap shock trooper for all you ppl who don't do halo) platoon, and he's the one of the best non-spartan soldier.

Odd: drafted into the Marine core. Dr halsey recruited him and went further with Spartan 1 augmentations. Odd had the right genetic code, so he was selected and was bioaugmented, as part of an experiment to up the Marine's abilities.

Jeremy: One of the best researchers there is, second only to Dr Catherine Halsey herself. Jeremy was responsible for the creation of the new compact shield unit, which is much cheaper and lighter that the Spartan's version. Though, it is not as strong.

Aelita: Odd's AI. She is as good as Cortana, but some say she's better. Aelita is a smart AI but with a stabilized structure, meaning, she has no lifespan limit.

Yumi: Works aboard the hospital ship _Hopeful_ (ship from Eric Nylund's novel, _Ghosts of Onyx _) as a docter, drafted into Dr Halsey's service to help bioagumentate the new Spartans.

Daigon: Dropped out of highschool because Covenant destroyed his home world. Joined marine core and now a Colonel.

"Red 1, and Red 2, move in and take out power," Ulrich ordered. " Red 4 cover them with sniper fire. Red 3, Detonate charges on my mark,"

The squad immediately obeyed, carrying out his orders. Rebels were acting up again, and this time, invaded a city on the planet of Corasius. Ulrich's squad was to make a hot drop right into the heart of the city, shut down the city wall's power, and open the doors wide for reinforcements.

"Sir, power in 3, 2, 1." Red 1 said over his COM. Ulrich could hear the drain of power as everything powered down.

"Affirmative," Ulrich said.

"Ready," Ulrich said to Read 3. "Mark,"

Red 3 pressed the detonator, and 3 Lotus anti-tank mines blew the gatehouse into smithereens. It was remarkable, really, about how they got the mines in, in the first place.

All they had to do was to slip the mines into the daypacks of sleeping Rebel guards. Simple, but destructive. And with out the power, no alarm could be sounded. The Rebels were used to explosions because the ODST's detonated some of their grenades every day to lull them into a false sense of security.

There was the sound of muffled coughs of silenced weapons.

"Red 1, here. Patrol eliminated."

"Confirmed, Red 1. Red Team, move out. Secure buildings A, and D. Set sniper posts up there and take out any guards you see." Ulrich replied.

"Yes sir!" Red team answered.

Ulrich paused. He thought he heard a rustle behind him, armor on pavement. He swept the area, using the heat vision the visor on his helmet provided. No good. It was in the evening, and the buildings were still hot from the afternoon sun. There was a flicker of movement, and Ulrich's MA5K assault rifle snapped up and opened fire. His aim was true, and bullets slammed into a figure in camo- armor, the armor briefly distorted from Ulrich's shots.

"Red Team! It's a trap! Camouflaged units at 6, 3, and 11 o'clock!" Ulrich yelled into his COM, frantically trying to warn his team.

"Stand down, soldier!" A familiar voice said over the COM. "It's alright, boy. Just a my Spartan squad in Camo armor borrowed from Colonel Ackerson, improved by Jeremy Belpois."

"Red Team, stand down." Ulrich ordered, before turning to the squad leader.

His men deactivated the camouflage function, revealing themselves. They were wearing SPI armor, of the Spartan 3's. But, it seemed bulkier than the ones Spartan 3's wore. Observation soon answered why. A slight shimmer around each soldier meant they also had shields

Turning his attention to the squad leader, he said, "Permission to speak freely, sir!"

"Go ahead, lieutenant,"

"Why are you here, Daigon?"

"CENTCOM decided to send in us as backup, and we got tired of waiting." Daigon said. "So, we just rappelled up the walls, disabled the security on the way up, and here we are. But, our teams were reassigned. Seems that these rebels here have some Covenant technology stashed here. Our job is retrieve that data and technology. Next, we disable any MAKO class drones, and the air defiance so we can take this place."

"Yes sir!" Ulrich saluted.

"At ease, soldier. Nobody salute or any of that kind of crap. There could be snipers anywhere looking for high rank targets. Am I clear?" Daigon ordered.

"Yes sir!" Red team responded.

"Oh and you guys can drop that yes sir stuff 'cuz I don't like formal stuff." Daigon said. "Let's move out!"

Sorry if I don't update some of my stories, I'm trying to juggle 3 of them at once. 


	2. Smoke and Mirrors

Disclaimer: you know the drill people

"Red 5, we need that gun out! Red 2, Red 3, suppressive fire, now! Red 4! Dog that ammo we're gonna need it later!" Ulrich dish out.

"Red 1 This is Blue 1. We need smoke and mirrors now! Camo is out. We need the works, got it Marine?" Daigon ordered over the COM.

"You got it." Ulrich replied.

Ulrich opened a private COM link to Red 2 and Red 3.

"I need Jackhammers, SPNKrs, flashbangs, smokes, and frags in NAV points A, B, C and D. Copy?"

"Red 2 copy."

"Red 3 copy."

A barrage of rockets and grenades detonated, obscuring the rebel's line of sight. Ulrich could see on the TACMAP and his motion sensor Blue team moving in, disabling their FOF tags as they went.

"Red 1 this is Blue 1. We are in. Make sure your boys don't fire on us. Plus, on my mark, do the whole smoke and mirrors thing again. Do you copy?"

"Red 1 copy. Ill check and see if we have enough for another barrage like that. One sec CO."

Ulrich relayed Daigon's orders to his team. HE opened a private COM link to Red 2.

"Red 2 do we have enough for smoke and mirrors?"

"We have a coupla rockets left, 3 frags, 2 smokes, 2 flashes between me and Red 3, and that's it."

"Crap. We won't have enough for a smoke and mirrors. Wait, didn't Red 4 dog some Lotus mines?"

"Hell ya sir! We got smoke and mirrors, Red 1"

"Don't use them all up. We might need'em later."

"Aye aye sir. Red 2 out."

"Blue 1, Red 1 here. We got smoke and mirrors for ya. If you can, secure as much ordnance as possible. We're low."

"Affirmative," Daigon replied.

Daigon's POV (after crossing into enemy-held position)

I ordered Blue 2 to a pair of buildings across from each other on the street. Blue 2 stealthed over, and attached charges to the buildings in strategical positions on the buildings, so when the charges detonated, the buildings would collapse onto the street, effectively blocking and pursing vehicles, and maybe even infantry.

A quick point to Blue 3 and a building, and 10 seconds, later, he was up there, sniper rifle in hand.

A quick downward slash with his hand and everyone except Blue 3 formed in a loose formation.

Daigon pointed to Blue 2 and pointed down, and then to the building across from Blue 3's. Blue 2 gave his satchel full of explosives to Blue 4, and took up a position in the building. A wave forward from Daigon, and they went on slowly, in a triangle down the street, staying in the shadows, watching for ambushes.

Daigon risked a link on the COM.

"Red 1 this is Blue 1. We are in. Make sure your boys don't fire on us. Plus, on my mark, do the whole smoke and mirrors thing again. Do you copy?"

Ulrich's voice crackled over the COM. "Red 1 copy. Ill check and see if we have enough for another barrage like that. One sec CO."

Daigon waited for a response while Ulrich checked with his squad.

"Blue 1, Red 1 here. We got smoke and mirrors for ya. If you can, secure as much ordnance as possible. We're low."

"Affirmative," Daigon said, and then, out of the blue, a RPG detonated in front of him. The blast threw him backward, and his visor cracked, the HUD flickering, and blood smeared all over the visor.

Daigon yelled into his COM, "Blue Team suppressive fire! Marines! Open fire!"

Daigon then passed out, oblivious of the battle being waged around him.


	3. What the

Disclaimer I am really really bored of saying this.

Yumi twirled her digi pen and studied her new patient's data.

**Name: -**

**Injury description: Direct hit of explosive rocket-propulsion projectile**

**Status: in cryo**

**Note: Further information cannot be revealed under orders of**

**ONI. **

Yumi winced as she read the injury description. She sighed as she read the note and typed in her eyes only, code word. She was pretty sure that this patient was something to do with Dr. Halsey's Spartan program. She had been recruited by ONI to assist Dr. Halsey. Scrolling through the list, she received a small shock. It was Daigon.

She hadn't seen Daigon for a while, nor any of the gang, for that matter. She found herself unconsciously scrolling through her data pad, when she looked down, and saw she had gone into her more personal files. She was looking at pictures of them in high school, all-laughing, hanging out. Yumi scrooled through the pictures, and stopped on the last one. It was a picture of Ulrich and her, sitting under a weeping willow.

_Good times, good times, _Yumi thought to herself.

Daigon eyelids flickered opened. He instantly snapped up into a combat stance, and instinctively reached for his rifle and a grenade.

"Whoa, cool it there, Daigon, you just had a major surgery. That blast you took saved your men, but nearly killed you," Yumi said.

"Yumi?" Daigon said, rubbing his eyes. "Long time no see."

"Yeah, I know. Have you see or heard anything about Ulrich?"

"Well actually, my squad met up with his squad on this last mission."

Yumi all of a sudden jerked up straight, pouring questions onto Daigon. "How is he? Is he okay? Has he been injured during the battle?"

"Honestly, I thought you knew. Obviously, we're on the _Hopeful_, I thought that there was some major op going on."

"No, there isn't. You were sent here in cryo by the corvette _Chalons _(you Halo novel fans out there, name sounds familiar? It's from _Ghosts of Onyx_. Awesome book, especially the end.).

"So, I guess Ulrich's still out there…"

They couldn't be more right.

With Ulrich, picking up where we left off with him

"Red 1 this is Blue 2, Blue 1 down. I repeat, Blue 1down!"

"I read you loud and clear. Blue 2, your in charge of your squad. Meanwhile, my boys will get to you and retreat to fall back point Gamma-23. Understood?"

"Aye sir!"

Ulrich sighed, and chucked a frag over his position to vent his anger. There was a loud explosion, followed by screams of agony. He keyed into his COM, and ordered Red 2 and Red 3 to the fall back point. There, a pelican medi-evac could be arranged.

Retorts of gunfire screamed over his head. Ulrich popped up, and sprayed down the whole area with his MP5. Scampering from a pile of rubble to another, he made it to a forward position. Clicking his COM twice, the boys threw frags, and made a distraction for him. Slipping behind the lines, he took out his MP5 again, and slid a new clip home with a satisfying click. Ulrich cocked, and mercilessly slaughtered the rebels. They had no rear guard, which made them completely vunerable.

"It's all clear!" Ulrich yelled out.

Red 4 popped up from his position, and slowly advanced forward. Red 5 stayed back, to cover him.

"Right. Now lets get 'em while the battles still hot sir," Red 4 said.

"No can do 4. We got a man down, so we pulling the plug. We're gonna retreat and recollect ourselves at Gamma."

"Yes sir!"

Delphas Pega System, Planet Dorphar, With Spartan Z-028, Odd

Odd crept slowly down the ravine, where he could ambush an unsuspecting Covenant patrol. Then, he could secure the area and signal in a Pelican full of Marines to help take a Covenant destroyer.

"Aelita, run a scan for Banshee patrols. I need that data stat."

"Ya, well, it wouldn't hurt to say please, would it?"

"Just get on it."

The AI boosted the SPI Mark 5 suit's scanners to full.

"Nope. But the patrol a kilometer away now. ETA 10 min."

"That'll be enough. Meanwhile, try to get into their battle network and cause a jam when the Pelican arrives."

"On it."

Odd scanned the bottom of the ravine carefully. Demolition had been his favorite class, and he was always on the top for that class. Using intel collected, he decided that he would use 2 claymore mines, 2 smokes, and a flash bang. He put the claymores on the sides of the road, facing each other. Cutting down the fuse, and attaching a smoke to each claymore lid, he could have the smokes and the claymores go off simultaneously. Odd also cut the fuse on the flash bang, and set a remote fuse that could be triggered from the controls in Odd's armor.

Odd settled back, readying his rifle. That's when he heard the scream of Banshees, and the thrum of Covenant Wraith tanks.

"Aelita! What the hells going on?"

"I think they either detected us, or this is just bad luck."

"Crap" Odd said and readied himself for the fight of his life.


	4. Strike now!

Disclaimer: I don't own Code Lyoko

With Ulrich

Ulrich led Red 4 and Red 5 in a loose V-formation. Their guns swept the buildings, searching for any possible ambush sites. Ulrich pulled up his TACMAP, and he could see 4 contacts, FOF tags disabled. Red 4 took up a firing position in a tree, carefully concealing himself.

Red 5 slowly advanced forward, and clicked his COM twice, to show the guard bound to be there that he was friendly. Blue 4 shimmered into view behind a Dumpster.

"Good to see you sir," Blue 4 saluted.

Ulrich returned the salute. "Aye. How's Blue 1?"

"Not looking good sir. He took an RPG in the chest area. The only thing keeping him alive is this medi-unit and biofoam."

"We need to get him-"

"Red 1 this is Red 4! Contact! I repeat contact! Enemy search and destroy patrol! They're checking the place out completely. No way you can hide!"

With Odd

Odd dug into his satchel and took out 3 Lotus anti-tank mines. He crept slowly to his trap and set the Lotas mines up. Digging through his satchel again, he pulled out an SPNKr launcher. He propped it up against a tree, and cocked his assault rifle. He laid down a few extra clips for convience.

The convey came closer. Odd could now see the full extent of it. A pair of ghosts were in front, followed by two Spectres, a Wraith tank, and another Ghost brought up the rear. A pair of Banshees circled over head. Luckily, the foliage was thick, and his armor was insulating so there was practically no way for them to detect him.

"Aelita. I'm out of ideas…"

"I'm stuck too. We've got limited resources, and we can't call in back up. The trap is too clustered to hit the whole convoy, so some units will pick up on your gunfire. If you try to run, the Banshees will spot you."

"Thanks. That really put things in perspective," Odd said sarcastically.

"Well, the truth hurts."

"Whatever,"

Odd decided the Spectres were the biggest threat, as all they had to do was spray the whole place down with fire. The Spectres approached the ambush, unaware of the lethal potency of the trap. Odd silently counted off in his head. _3…2…1…0…_The claymores, smokes, flashs, and Lotases all blew up simultaneously. The explosions tore through both Spectres, and the fragments kill the leading Ghosts. It couldn't have gone better. The Wraith tank and the other Ghost were bottled up, unable to move forward, because of the wreckage. Odd leveled the missle launcher and fired both rockets at the Wraith. The first rocked the tank, and the second penetrated. The missile strike didn't kill the pilot though. Odd picked up the assault rifle and emptied a whole clip into the tank.

Secondary explosions detonated throughout the tank as the reactor powering the tank blew, spewing plasma everywhere. The plasma splattered all over the Ghost, killing the pilot.

Odd reloaded the missile launcher and took aim at one of the Banshees. They were strafing the foliage now, trying to hit the ambusher. Odd fired, and smiled grimly in satisfaction as the rocket tore apart the cockpit. The second missile found it's way to the second Banshee, detonating in a spectacular explosion of flame and plasma.

Thank you to Hyperion Prime, a steadfast person….

Another thanks goes to Melcho….She'll be on site at any great story….Great person… just look on the reviews on pretty much any story and she'll be one of the reviewers.


	5. Fall back point Gamma23

Disclaimer: I don't own Code Lyoko

Ulrich tore off his helmet, panting in exertion. Red 4 and Red 5 bent over double trying to catch their breaths. It was a harrowing journey back…one that nearly claimed Red 5's life.

The patrol had found them all right, but they weren't expecting a full-blown Spartan team and 3 ODSTs. Everyone had thrown grenades, killing most of the patrol. Red 4 sprayed fire onto their backs, throwing them in disarray. But a dog had survived. It leapt forward at Red 5, teeth bared. The impacted knocked Red 5 backwards, nearly snapping his neck. A single burst of gunfire from Blue 4 took care of the dog.

They had run for their lives, as MAKO drones picked up their location and chased them to Gamma point 23. Luckily, Red 2 and Red 3 station there had Jackhammers at the ready, and took the MAKO drones out.

"Sir!" Red 2 approached Ulrich.

"Yes?"

"We have some battle intel from CENTCOM. There are some silos positioned nearby to this location. We believe this is where the central command is. If it is there, it's good for us. If it isn't, well, we still have to take the silos anyway."

"Great… another objective. Get Blue 1 under reversible death (it's a state where all the blood in someone's body is replaced with this liquid that shuts down the body, until proper medical help can arrive. Just think of it as a portable cryo system, just without the whole freezing thing.)."

"Aye sir. We moved Gamma retrieval point to over there, to that underground parking garage. We encountered some resistance, but we shut the lower levels down. We just need your backup to clear it out. I think it's being used as a storage facility."

"All right. We'll clear the building, fortify it, and turn it into a stronghold. Move out men. NAV points set."

With Odd

He reached the clearing, and snapped a few light sticks to illuminate the spot. Aelita had already called in the Pelicans, and they were due here any minute. He took out his rifle, and started cleaning it. Odd had already taken inventory of his available resources. All he had left was 1 clip of assault rifle ammo, 2 clips for his pistol, 3 frag grenades, 1 smoke grenade, and a plasma pistol.

His fight to reach this clearing pretty much took up all his resources. Suddenly, Odd heard a twig snap. The sound would be inaudible to a normal human being, but Odd's bioaugmentations let him hear things others couldn't. Odd snapped up into a combat stance, a pistol in one hand, and a plasma pistol in the other. He scanned the darkness for the enemy, searching in the foliage. But the attack wasn't going to be a ground assault, it would be an air attack…

Cliffy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ha!!!!!!!!!!!


	6. Into the Maw

**Disclaimer: I know that you know...**

**Drones buzzed out of the forest and into the night sky. Odd heard the hum of overcharged plasma pistols and saw the sickly green glow too late. The drones simultanously shot, 8 globes of plasma aimed at the Spartan. Odd dodged the first 6, leaped over the 7th, but was struck by the last.**

**Odd's shields sputtered, trying to reenergize. It flickered once, twice, and failed completely. Odd snapped up his pistols, the plasma one already overcharged, the other blazing away.**

**Odd's overcharge splashed over a drone, which dropped from the sky, dead. The meter on the plasma pistol sky rocketed, and dumped excess heat. But, it couldn't, and started overloading.**

**The Spartan threw the pistol at the drones, and it blew up, peppering the drones with shrapnel.**

**Odd's M9 snapped up agian, and took out the rest of the drones.**

**"This is Bravo-5. I see a gunfire in progess. Is it clear?"**

**"Yes it is Bravo-5, proceed to land in designated area." Aelita answered for Odd.**

**Odd strode over to a drone, and requistioned it's weapon.**

With Daigon & Yumi

"I can't get access. Besides, where are we going to get a Slipspace capable ship?"

"Leave that to me."

"I've got a feeling I don't like what your going to do."

"Fine. Then go down in Deck 5, hanger B. Code word Delta-546343"

"Why?"

"Because a shipment came in on a APC transit."

"Okay."

Daigon turned and went off to gather the shipment.

Yumi watched Daigon for a while, and went a separate shortcut to the hangar.

When Yumi got there, she went to the "transit". It was actually a modified Chiroptora-class ship (for you ppl who don't know Halo 2 well, this ship is a ship with the smallest ever Slipspace capacitor. In this story, Yumi took the capacitor out, and outfitted it with one made by Jeremy, as the original one was unreliable)

Daigon climbed aboard the ship, and looked around. He recognized the interior. He realized Yumi had tricked him, and tried to run for the exit. Too late. Yumi watching him from the cockpit, remote locked the door.

"Yumi! How did you get this vessel? It's an illegal craft! The Chiroptoras were decommisioned!"

"It wasn't very hard. I was one of the few who bought the craft separate from military control. Besides, this ship's rigged with one of the most advanced counterelectronics stealth package, courtesy of a friend."

"Let me take a guess at this friend. Jeremy?"

"The one and only. Now lets go."

Yumi powered up the engines, and opened the bay doors. The bay rapidly decompressed, and the craft shot forward, undetected by the supercarrier it was in.

She checked the dials. The engine was running at 30, max operating capabilities under stealth systems. The stealthing system showed running at 100.

Yumi knew that if they charged for a Slipspace jump, they'd be detected before they could escape. That's why the ship had 2 separate fusion reactors.

That kind of power could charge a capacitor in seconds. An that's what Yumi did.

* * *

With Ulrich 

The security barrior slowly rose, and Ulrich entered the garage. Red 2 and Red 3 went back to reinforcing the garage when they finally came back. He spraying shockcrete over the walls, increasing their resistance 3 fold.

Blue team was assembled in front of the security gate leading to the lower levels.

"Blue 4, 5, Stay here to guard with Red 4 and 5. Blue 2, 3, we're going down there."

Blue 4 triggered the gate, and it raised slowly. Blue 5 dove forward under the gate, and with a deep breath, Ulrich dived into the darkness too.

This excerpt is for linkinparkfan4ever. Thanks for reviewing!

Enjoy!

**Halo: First Strike by Eric Nylund (best sci-fi author ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)**

**P249**

Linda's medical data winked on a display along with the entire Spartan roster: a long list of every Spartan's current operational status. Only a handful were left, almost everyone listed as WOUNDED IN ACTION or MISSING IN ACTION.

"No KIAs?" Dr Halsey murmured. She touched SPARTAN-034's entry." Sam is listed as missing in action. Why would that be? He died in 2525."

"ONI Section Two Directive Nine-Three-Zero," Cortana replied. "When ONI went public with the Spartan-II program it was decided that reports of Spartan losses could cause crippling lose of morale. Consequently, any Spartan casualties are listed as MIA or WIA to maintain the illusion that Spartans do not die."

"Spartans never die?" she whispered. Dr. Halsey swiveled out of the contour chair and pushed the monitors out of her way with sudden violence. "If only that were true."

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund P 370

Now Kurt could concentrate on what had to be done.

He picked up Tom's MA5K. Its ammo counter indicated half a magazine. It would have to do. He grabbed the last missile launcher, too. He was sure he could find a use for it.

The "hill" around the center was only a meter tall now and shrinking rapidly as the concentric rings eased back to the floor of the room. The finlike towers folded inward, almost flat against the ground.

Elite snipers poke over the top of the hill and fired a tight cluster of plasma.

Kurt was too slow to dodge the shots. His SPI armor heated, cracked, and half of his chest plate shattered away.

Smoldering, Kurt dropped to his knees. Blackness clouded his mind. He struggled to stay conscious-fought his way back by sheer willpower, and his vision cleared.

The snipers backed away, not bothering to finish him off. More Elites appeared on the hill, now only half a meter tall, sinking even faster toward a level topology.

A Hunter pair appeared on the slight rise and assessed Kurt. They snorted, unimpressed.

_Almost there, _he thought. _Almost done. Almost won._

Kurt grabbed up the SPNKr launcher and fired from the hip. The missile rocketed toward one Hunter, hit, exploded, and knocked it off the top. Kurt leveled his assault rifle and sprayed the other Hunter, but it turtled behind its shield.

The rifle's bolt clacked-empty.

The Hunter stood and growled. Its mate, bloodied and still smoking from the missile impact, stomped toward Kurt, hands ready to tear him into pieces.

Kurt ventured a glance back. The rift was only a flicker now, and shrinking.

His mission timer read "0:47."

A sharp bark behind the Hunters made them halt in their tracks.

An Elite in golden armor strode toward them, gracing Kurt with a glance that was part disdain…and part respect. It jabbered orders at the Hunters and the others.

Kurt's translation software deciphered part of this: _"Damage not the center. Engineers with the Slipspace field shunts… Reopen the silver gate. Glory is ours!"_

A roar of thunderous triumph burst from the gathered Covenant.

Kurt struggled to rise. There was more pain than he'd ever felt, and his legs had turned into wet sand. His vision tunneled… but he got to his feet…and raised both hands into a fighting stance.

"You haven't won," Kurt said. "You still got me to get through."

The Ship Master assessed Kurt and nodded, perhaps understanding him, perhaps not. It gazed upon Kurt as an equal. A fellow warrior.

Around them the concentric rings settled to the floor, and with a whispered hiss, all of the ridges melded into a single smooth surface. The fins touched down silently, thirteen clamping armatures splayed two meters from the center of the room.

His countdown timer blinked at him "0:00."

He exhaled. The rift was closed. Kurt opened his team roster-subheading status-moved Will, SPARTAN-043; Dante, SPARTAN-G188; and Holly, SPARTAN-G003 to the missing-in-action column, adhering to the tradition of never listing a fallen Spartans "killed in action."

Kurt then highlighted Lieutenant Commandeer Kurt Ambrose… and moved that name to MIA as well- next to Kurt, SPARTAN-051.

The room started to spin. His mouth went dry. He tried to swallow. Couldn't.

His vision doubled and he thought he saw Tom and Lucy come back and get him… but it wasn't them. It was Shane, Robert, and Jane from Team Wolf Pack (These are just visions).

There were hundreds of Spartans with him on the platform- From Alpha and Beta Companies, Dante, Holly, Will, and even Sam… all ready to fight and win this last battle with him.

Hallucination? Maybe. It was nonetheless welcome.

The ghostly Spartans nodded, and gave him the thumbs-up "can-do" signal.

Kurt wouldn't let them down. All he had to do was single-handedly stop a Covenant army. One last impossible mission… the short definition of any Spartan. It was the least he owed them.

The Fleet Master Elite Snarled at Kurt, and the translation filtered through his helmet's speaker: "_One last fight, demon. You will die and we shall reopen the silver path."_

"Die?" Kurt laughed. "Didn't you know?" he told the Elite. "…Spartans never die."

Kurt turned his gauntlet face-up and pressed the detonator.

Great, Huh? For safety measures, I am telling you, I did not write First Strike or Ghost of Onyx. Eric Nylund did. Furthermore, have no connection with the making of Halo, so I don't own it. Plus, the detonator in the story, it detonated 2 cut-down Fenris nukes in Kurt's pack.


	7. Man Down!

Disclaimer: This is routine!

Daigon rummaged through the locker, pulling out all the weapons he could find.

He checked a clip of sniper ammo, and taped it to his armor(i forgot to tell u ppl in the beginning that Daigon is a spartan too)

he checked his inventory.

5 clips of assualt rifle rounds, the rifle itself, a magnum pistol with 2 clips for it, and 3 frag grenades. Oh, and a clip of sniper, but no gun to go with it.

He shook his head. If this was all that they had, they wouldn't last very long in a firefight.

"You looking for weapons?" Yumi asked causully.

"Yeah, but if we are engaged in a combat situation, we're gonna run outta ammo fast. I mean, there was practically nothing in the weap locker."

"True, but, if your looking for weapons, your looking in the wrong place"

Yumi walked over to the side of the ship, and pressed her hand on the seemingly innocent wall. THe wall slid apart, and revealed a cache of weapons.

"Dang," Daigon whistled.

He loaded up on assualt rifle ammo and pistol ammo. He also picked up a sniper rifle and clip-on mini-rocket launcher. There even were some of the latest equipment including the bubble shield, radar jammer, etc. Plus there were also some Covenant weapons, even an energy sword.

Daigon checked over his newly aquired equipment. He may be a lone soldier as of now, but he could take and dish out a heck of a beating.

* * *

With Ulrich: 

Blue 2 and Blue 3 covered Ulrich as he moved further into the lower levels of the garage complex. So far, there had been minimal resistance.

Blue 2 adjusted the dampener on his rifle, and sighted down the scope.

He waved his hand, and Ulrich silently ran across the level, and opened the gate on the other side. He was soon joined by Blue 2 and Blue 3.

Blue 3 tookout a small vial containing gun cleaning fluid, and oiled the hinges on the gate.

Ulrich activated the gate, and the gate rose noiselessly up.

That was when gunfire picked up.

Gunfire roared, and bullets screamed toward the unprotected trio. Blue 3 threw a frag grenade, distracting the rebels as they got into cover. Ulrich was hit 3 times, his armor deflecting the first 2. The third smashed into the armor, ripping through it, and into Ulrich.

Ulrich fell down, but managed to pull himself to cover. Blue 2 and 3 blazed away, stacatto bursts of bullets zooming back and forth.

Ulrich choking from pain, opened a comlink to Blue 4.

"Tighten it up up there, we've got injured, and being overwhelmed. Get to it!"

"Yes sir! Oh yeah sir, A medevac pelican came and picked up Blue 1."

"Affirmative"

Ulrich got up, and threw a nade into the the rebels, spraying them down with suppressive fire. He limped over to behind a pillar, and worked his way forward, back to the security gate controls.

Blue 2 and 3 got what he was trying to do, and they covered him with sprays of staggered fire. Ulrich got to the controls, and triggered the closing mechanism.

A rebel saw Ulrich and sprayed a hail of bullets at Ulrich. There was no way he could have missed. The bullets pounded Ulrich, which finally gave out. Ulrich collapsed, flickering into unconciousness. The world spun, and Ulrich blacked out.

* * *

With Odd: 

He and the Marines crept forward, and one of them leveled his sniper rifle. THe Marine sniper fired his rifle 3 times, and Odd watched his progress. Grunts manning Shade turrets fell down dead.

A second group over on the other side, unleashed a rocket/sniper strike, blow up fuel reserves and vehicles.One of the Covenant structures blew, sending red- hot fragments everywhere.

Odd grinned. So far so good.

That's when something rose up from the smoking base.

Odd's faceplate automatically zoomed forward. He paled. It was a Scarab walker.

* * *

With Jeremy 

Jeremy sighed, and he tapped the controls on his ship. It changed course, on the way to the planet Corasius. He'd read reports that there was rebel invasions there, but he'd had to go there, because one of his staff had his lab based there, and said that he'd found a way to boost the energy yield of a fusion reactor, which would give UNSC ships a heads up in the battle field.

He walked over to the converted prowler's lab, and continued working on a new compact shield unit. It would have double the strength of a Spartan shield, but would require way more energy. It was designed for vechiles. When completed, it could withstand a direct hit from a rocket.

Jeremy looked up through the bay's windows. Longswords flew in formation around the prowler. Escorts.

Jeremy sighed, and continued his work

* * *

Ill try to update ASAP

* * *


	8. Progression

Disclaimer: i dont...

* * *

Good Marines had died today. 

Odd looked around him, the smoking ruins of the base in the distance.

Odd reloaded his rifle, and started clearing out the Scarab. Muffled coughing came out from the corridor. Odd rushed in, and discovered a Marine there, covered in blood, strangling an Brute with his last vestiages of strength.

It was a remarkable sight. A single Marine, beat a Brute in hand to hand combat. Odd shot the Brute in the head, killing it.

He bent down to the Marine.

"You did good, soldier... Not many could have rangled with a Brute in close combat and survived"

"It was nothing, Chief. I put a full clip into that sucker first. I'll get all them Covie uglies!"

The Marine struggled to get up.

Odd supported the Marine, and he administored some medical care to the Marine under the careful guidence of Aelita.

Odd sat down on some rubble and sighed. He just didn't see a way mankind could win, but he would fight all the way, even to the end.

The healing Marine cocked his gun. "Sir, I'll go search for survivors and salvage some equipment."

"Aye, Sergant. I'll go with you."

The pair set off into the wreckage, searching for anything.

Aelita said, "I detect some FOF tags up ahead...Maybe more Marines survived. The thing is, they're deactivated, so no way telling if they're Covenant, or human."

Odd waved at the Marine, and pointed at the ridge where Aelita had indicated.

"Wait, I'm picking up Banshee patrols. 5 kilometers south from our position. We should get into cover" Aelita warned.

Odd and the Marine crested the ridge, and found the remains of the second Marine squad.

"Chief..." One of the Marines breathed, coughing blood.

"Hell, it's good to see you sir. We sure beat the heck out of them!"

"Amen to that!" The sergant said.

"Chief, I'll take care of my men. Why don't you scout out a position for us to get to in cover from them Banshees?"

Odd nodded, and shut off the external speakers.

"Aelita, could you scan the region for any sizable caves?"

"Sure thing... Faraday Cage? (It's a room thingy that blocks counter-electronics and is virtually undetectable)"

"Yeah, I got some thermal blankets salvaged from the drop pods."

"Alright... I got it. About 290 meters at 5 o'clock."

A nav point appear on Odd's HUD.

Odd set off toward the cave.

* * *

Yumi was scolling through her datapad, typing in calculations, adjusting the Nav computer.

Again, her mind wandered, and she found herself staring at the picture of her and Ulrich.

"You really miss him, don't you?" Daigon asked quietly.

Yumi didn't reply. She turned her head away, so Daigon wouldn't see that she was crying.

* * *

Blue 4 looked at the construction progess. IT was going pretty good, the walls were already covered in shockcrete, and already steel I-beams were being installed to help rein force the structure. Red 4 and 5 were welding together steel rebar to go over the drying shockcrete.

The pelican had also dropped off a load of supplies, and a squad of Marines.

After he heard Red 1's report, he'd felt uneasy.

"Marines! Assemble!"

The Marines stood attention as Blue 4 gave out his orders.

"Go down to the lower levels and reinforce Fire Team Ozair. Got it?"

"Yes sir!"

The Marines filed down the ramp, and into the lower levels.

* * *

You ppl who are reviewing rock!


	9. Signal Flare

Disclaimer: I dont own anything!!!!

Oh ya, Fire Team Ozair is Ulrich's squad if you haven't guessed it already

* * *

Inside the city, William got up from his bunk and picked up his rifle. He checked it over, loading bullets into magazines and clipping them to his belt. UNSC forces infiltrated the city, and William's squad was selected to patrol today. 

William strapped on the classical rebel armor. It was old F-124 Mark 2 Tactical armor, but some rebel techies screwed around with it and upgraded the junk.

"Yo William, Lets get going! We gots some hotspots to go to!" William's sergant shouted.

The patrol squads exited the fortified citidel, and split up into their respective squads.

William walked cautiously forward, ducking to the side on the sergant's signal.

William heard that they were assigned to reinforce the squads trapped in the garage. He was pretty sure the UNSC forces were bunked down there. Fierce fighting was definitely on his plate today.

* * *

"Watch it Marines! Keep 'em down!" 

Blue 2 sprayed fire into the corridor, and then rolled a 'nade down the corridor.

It exploded, shrapnel flying.

Blue 3 rushed forward, and confirmed the kills.

"Marines! Hold this area!" Blue 2 commanded

"Aye aye, sir!" The Marine sergant replied.

Ulrich was coming to, and shook the disorientation from his head.

"Damn that was one heck of a firefight." Ulrich said wincing.

"Ya, I know...You okay?" Blue 2 replied.

"yeah, I'm alright... Nothing we cant fix up with some stuff from the first aid kit."

* * *

With Odd 

The fire crackled as Odd fed it. The tattered Marines shifted around, uneasy, tired, and some scared.

The thermal blankets had successfully shielded them from the Banshee's radar and thermal sensors.

The sergant sidled up to Odd and said quietly "Chief... I don't think there's any way we could signal for a Pelican without attracting attention. The Covenant are bound to intercept any signal and will triangulate us to here."

Odd mused it over. He briefly replied with an "mmm" and killed the external speakers.

"He's right you know..." Aelita said. "Your suit was damaged in the fight, and I can't incrypt the signals or anything. The message will be a signal flare to our position."

Odd simply thought.


	10. Scarab ahead!

Disclaimer: I dont own these stuff.

* * *

Odd's mind wandered and he recalled the fight with the Scarab. 

_The monster of a vechicle powered up it's guns and sprayed the heavy weapon teams with boiling plasma, guns that were meant for armored vechicles._

_Odd saw a Marine load his rocket launcher and fire both of the tubes at the monster. The first rocket slammed into the Scarab's turret, knocking the plasma beam wide. The second one hit the leg. It was a lucky shot and the leg collapsed on itself. _

_The Scarab's merely shook off the damage, despite the damaged turret and the smashed leg._

_It charged up it's main gun and literarly obliterated the platuo. But the Marine team managed to escape the shot, because they moved down the slope._

_" Marines! Go go go! Odd and the Marines charged forward. One of the Marines hefted a Jackhammer RPG. He braced himself and fired. The RPG rocketed toward the Scarab's other front leg, and crippled it._

_Brute-Grunt teams counter charged from the ruined base. Odd ran forward, his feet gouging into the ground as he accelerated to his top speed of 50 kilometers/hour._

_Odd threw a nade, and one handed sprayed the Covenant down with a SMG._

_He was soon amongst them in the fray, movements blurs. He lashed out with fists of metal, crushing heads, collapsing chests. He liberated two energy swords from a pair of dead Brutes and was hacking and slashing the Covenant. _

_The Marines joined the fray, pistols and daggers out in meelee. Pistols shots cracked out loud, plasma guns spitting fire. But, even with numbers, the humans prevailed in the conflict._

_Odd hefted a Lotas anti-tank mine and threw it at the weakened leg of the Scarab. It detonated as it hit the leg, shattering it completely. The giant crashed to the ground, and the UNSC poured into the flaming giant, killing all in their way._

_It was a vicious fight. Marines were cut down by energy swords, gravity hammers, and plasma fire. But several Marines approprieated Jackel shields and several portable shields and cut down endless Covenant. Odd was at the front, energy sword in one hand, gravity hammer in the other._

_Bubble shields were erected, and slowly, the UNSC beat back the Covenant._

_That's when A team of highly-trained, heavily armored Brutes stepped into the fray. The tables turned, and one by one the Marines fell. Odd leapt forward, cutting apart a Brute with the sword, smashing back another with the hammer._

_Soon, it was just Odd and the Elite Brutes left. One of the Brutes lunged forward. Odd neatly sidestepped and slammed the hammer into it's back, breaking it's spine. The other Brutes charged at once and it was a fierce meelee. Odd sword energy ran out, so he was two-handing the hammer to devastating effect. _

_The last Brute stood. Odd hefted the gravity hammer. The hammer's irridecent glow illuminating the battleground. The hammer flickered once, twice, and died. Odd looked at the hammer and dropped it._

_The Brute appeared to be grinning, and decided to drop it's weapons too. The Brute banged it's fists on it's chest, a clear challenge. Odd roared and made an ancient, arcane gesture with one finger._

_The Brute charged Odd, but Odd held his ground. He gathered his prostigous strength as a Spartan, and in a spectacle any Spartan would have appluaded enthueastically, lifted the Brute over him, and smashed it into the floor._

_The Brute died intsantly, neck snapped. Odd stood there breathing heavily, and took his assualt rifle from his back, and proceeded to clear the Scarab._

* * *

Sniper fire rang out, bullet whizzing over William's head. The rumors were true. They'd headed into hell. One thing the rumors didn't say was that there were Spartans amongst the UNSC forces. And to top it off, PDF soldiers banded together and attacked the attacking rebels (PDFPlanetary Defense Forces, it's from Warhammer 40k. Pockets of shattered PDF forces still lingered in the city, using guerilla tactics.) 

It was going to be a long day.

* * *

Fire team Ozair managed to clear out the lower levels. They were on they're way back when a Marine spotted a concealed door. 

"Hey looky here. We've got a secret door here."

"Stand clear!" Ulrich ordered.

He placed a plasma grenade on the door, and set it off. The plasma partially melted the door, but it was still in working order. Sort of.

Ulrich didn't intend to blow down the door. When a plasma grenade detonates, it releases a sort of EMP wave, that would short out most electronic systems, including locks and cameras.

Blue 3 literarly kicked down the door, UNSC Marines guns pointed at the door. There was nobody in there. They proceeded cautiously down the corridor, and at the end, a heavy door state of the art locking systems. But, despite it's sophisticatedness, it still couldn't withstand the EMP from a plasma grenade.

The door opened, and everyone gasped in awe. It was a full blown hanger, with Scorpion tanks, Warthogs, Pelicans, Longswords, Mako-class drones, and supplies. Best of all, it wasn't heavily guarded, as it was one of the smallest supply depots.

* * *

The craft materialized into normal space, and cut it's engines. It soon disappeard off of any radar system that happened to be monitoring the surronding space. Engine baffles and stealth systems allowed it to sneak up to the planet of Corasis. 

It guided itself to an orbit, intercepting any signals from the rebel-captured city.

Yumi and Daigon, had arrived.

* * *

Meanwhile, another craft winked into normal space, with a guard of Longswords. They swooped down towards the planet, and landed in a desolate desert on the Corasis.

Jeremy climbed off his personal craft and walked into the hidden lab.

* * *

I hope this was enough action! 

Thanks to Hyperion Prime, Linkinparkfan4ever, and Arch Dragon!


	11. Engage them!

Disclaimer

* * *

Sam reloaded his MA5K, and popped up over the make shift battlements and fired at the rebels under cover. He lobbed a frag behind them, hopiong to catch them unprotected in the back. 

The grenade detonated, sending a soldier flying.

"Red 2 sir, I've got orders from the CO(COCommanding Officier). He wants us to get those rebels cleared out and a parameter established in the next 3 hours. A Pelican's coming in, and we need this zone cleared of anti-aircraft guns."

Sam nodded in reply, and groaned inwardly. It would take forever to establish a parameter, and make sure the area inside didn't have any remaining rebels. Plus, they had to keep the rebels out of the parameter.

"Red team! Lets go! Prepare for assualt action! Rendezous with the PDF forces at the NAV point! Move out!" Sam ordered.

Sam opened a private link to Red 5. "Detonate the mines. We need a parameter."

"Aye sir!"

7 Lotas mines, 11 frags, 3 smokes, and 2 flashbangs all detonated simualtainously. Red team vaulted from the roof of the garage into the enemy lines, toward the PDF forces entrenchment.

Sam looked out of the side of his eye and saw Red 5, the last ODST to vault over, jump over the battlements, wielding two SMGs, spraying the opposition with a hail of bullets.

Sam hefted the M12 pistol. Pistol was an understatement. The M12 was a semi-automatic gun that shot high caliber, highly explosive bullets. And it had a cartridge of 15.

In other words, the M12 was a big gun, impossible to dual-wield because of its recoil.

Joshua, Red 3, raised his shotgun and started blasting into the smoke.

"Red Team! Go go go!"

As the smoke cleared, the rebels orginized a counter-offensive. They yelled war crys, and charged.

"Red Team! Abandon objective! Engage rebel forces!" Sam ordered. If they went for the PDF entrenchments, they would have been shot in the back.

Red Team turned around, and charged the rebel forces. Red 4 went at them, both M9 pistols blazing. Red 3 pumped his shotgun, and leapt into the meelee, blasting away with deadly effect (On YouTube, search for a video called Codex 7 . It is an awesome vid of a guy wielding a shotgun to amazing effect!)

Red 5 threw a frag right into the mass of rebels, scything shrapnel cutting into the enemy.

Sam went at them, M12 booming. He smashed the gun into a rebel's face, knocking him out cold. Sam observed the battle. It was obvious that they would be overwhelmed, despite their superiority.

"Red Team! Retreat! Fall back!"

"Belay that order, Red Team. Reinforcements have arrived!"

Fire Team Ozair charged into the conflict. Ulrich fought over to his fellow ODSTs.

"Red 1, it's good to see you."

"Likewise."

Ulrich fired away at point-blank range with his assualt rifle.

"Crap. I'm out!" Ulrich said, clipping the rifle to his back. He pulled out a M9 pistol, and blazed away.

A particular resiliant rebel made his way right up to the ODSTs. Ulrich turned, and plugged away. The first few shots deflected off the armor. Then, click, click, click.

"Damn" Ulrich swore and started beating the guy with his pistol. The rebel blocked, and knocked the pistol out of his grip. Ulrich lashed out with his foot, and the rebel tried to block it with his gun. He succeeded, sort of. The gun was wrenched out of his hands, and impacted right on the rebel's visor, knocking his helmet off.

"William" Ulrich hissed.

"Ulrich?" William said, half questioning, half demanding.

Ulrich unpolorized his visor, anger coursing through him. Ulrich repeatedly smashed his fist at William. William blocked some of the blows, but he couldn't block all of them. The blows were so forceful, it broke through his armor.

Ulrich continued, sinking blow after blow into the rapidly weakening William.

"Makos!" Blue 5 called out.

"Men into the garage! Go go go!" The UNSC forces disengaged the rebels, and ran into the base, their retreat covered by Blue 2 and Blue 3.

The heavily fortified gate crashed down over the entrance, and locked firmly into the mechanism.

The Makos released their missiles, and they detonated against the walls of the fort/garage.

"Well, that was close." Blue 2 said.

* * *

I dont feel like writing anymore right now. I think ill continue tommorrow or day after tommorow 


	12. Commader Drake

Disclaimer

* * *

"Sir, CENTCOM sent orders. We gotta establish a friendly green zone here. A Pelican's coming in and we need the anti-air guns out!" Sam yelled over the gunfire. 

Ulrich studied the datapad. He opened a vid screen to the PDF. "Drake, can you rally your men, and get to the back of the garage. We'll need as many men as we can get."

The PDF commander replied " We'll need lots of cover fire, but I think we can do it."

"Alright."

Ulrich cut the link and cocked his rifle. "Red Team! Assemble! Get the remaining ordanace!"

"Aye sir!" they replied crisply.

Blue 4 approached Ulrich. Blue 4 was the techno-guy in Blue Team. He rigged the whole garage with a security trigger, and had set a basic battlefield monitor system. This system linked with orbiting satallites to gather information, and to communicate with CENTCOM. Since it was linked to all the millitary satillates allowed, Blue 4 could monitor space traffic, if he wanted to.

"I detected an anomaly in sector Y-367. There was an energy spike, and something triggered the orbital defense systems. But then, nothing."

"Contact orbital defense stations and tell them to be ready for possible Covenant-vector attack...Or a possible nonCovenant-vector attack..."

"Aye."

Ulrich was puzzled by this latest bit of news. Energy anomalies were not unheard of, but the triggering of the defense systems meant that somthing solid was there. If it was Covenant, they would show up on sensors, as they wouldn't bother stealthing, would they? After all, Covenant were arrogant to the humans. But, they were smart, and didn't always go by the book.

* * *

Jeremie studied the reactor. 

"So... you say that this reactor is 200 more fuel-effiecent, and boosts the yield by 150?"

"Yes. We have had several successful tests, in multiple craft, sizes ranging from Prowler-class to Carrier-class."

"No anomalies whatsoever?"

"No anomalies were detected sir. We are going to run a few more tests to make sure that it is safe to use. Then, we will try to power a Slipspace capacitor in an controlled environment, then in starships, starting from Prowler-class again."

"Tell me, do you think you could boost the yield to 200 to power a shield?"

* * *

Drake looked down at his men The rag tag group of Marines looked up at him,faces gaunt.

sorry guys, the stupid thing deleted the rest of my story, and im too pissed off to rewrite the rest


	13. Boarding Action

Disclaimer: i dont...

* * *

Drake looked down at his men The rag tag group of Marines looked up at him,faces gaunt. 

"Alright men... I know we've been through hell and back. But, we gotta go back. This time, no sewer full of rebels to clear out, or an armoury to raid, but we gotta get through those lines. There, we can get food, ammunition, and an actually place to sleep."

"Amen!" a trooper shouted.

"Good. Here's the battle plan. 'Nades out, and run like hell. Shoot anything that ain't UNSC. Got it?"

"Yes sir!"

"Alright. Go Go GO!!!!!!!"

* * *

Ulrich zoomed into the PDF position. His face plate automatically zoomed in, and Ulrich could see each grenade they threw out. Clearly, they were throwing everything they had, for Ulrich saw a trooper toss a road flare. The PDF troops climbed over the entrenchments, yelling warcries. They ran for cover, even before the grenades detonated. 

Ulrich clicked his COM once, and he knew, on the roof, that a chaingun was being hefted into place. The heavy-weapon team on the roof popped up, and shot their payload. 6 Jackhammer rockets, 2 SPNKr's, and a Lotas mine.

A split second later, the heavy-chaingun opened up, its sound deafening.

Ulrich yelled over the noise. " Open the gate!"

Blue 2 and 3 took up firing positions on each side of the gate, and Red Team behind them. Red 5 triggered the gate release.

One by one the troopers stumbled in. As soon as the last one got in, the gate slammed down, and the heavy chaingun removed.

Drake went up to Ulrich. "I suppose that went well."

"We'll need to get some ordance, and some better armor for your men." Ulrich said.

"Where'll we get that stuff?" Drake asked.

"Oh, we have some places." Ulrich replied, a gleam in his eyes.

* * *

A private-class ship shimmered onto radar, and docked into a restricted dock. Daigon strode down the ramp, only to be stopped by a pair of guards. 

"Hey, this is a restricted dock! You can't dock here!"

Daigon just merely flashed his silver Eagle, showing that he was of Colonel rank.

The guards both snapped to attention, and saluated, which Daigon casually returned. He began striding toward the Millitary Transit Depot, Yumi following close behind.

"Yumes, do you know how to use one of these?" Daigon asked, handing her a SMG and a M9 pistol.

"Yup" she replied, racking the slide on the pistol.

* * *

Odd crept slowly foward onto the overhang, and adjust the sniper rifle's scope. He zoomed in, examining the Covenant patrols 40 feet below. Pairs of Jackals patrolled the gravity lift, and there were 2 teams of Brute-Grunt squads. 

The 2 UNSC snipers crouched next to him. Odd pointed at the Brutes, then the Jackals. They nodded in reply. Take out the brutes, then the Jackals.

Odd zoomed into the first Brute. A single shot rang out, piercing right through the Brute's helmet. Instantly, the Covenant were in alarm. Sniper fire rang out, dropping Covenant with each shot. Finally, a Jackal managed to rally the remaining Jackals and Grunts. Grunts were in the center, setting up a mortar, and the Jackals surronded them, shields outward. A pair of Jackals next to the grunts hefted plasma carbines, and searched the surrounding area.

Odd waved at the other snipers. They both moved back down the slope, out of sight. Odd too moved out of sight. He loaded the RPG launcher taken from a dead Brute, and moved back onto the slope.

"Warning. Covenant are sending down more reinforcements. If I am translating correctly, they are also sending 2 Phantoms with Banshee escorts" Aelita said.

Odd quickly leapt up without replying and emptied the launcher into the tightly clustered formation. No shield could have withstood that barrage.

Just as he crouched back down, more Jackals, Brutes, and Grunts landed on the lift. 2 Phantoms landed on the opposite overhangs, Banshees escorting them.

Odd clicked his COM. The UNSC snipers switched to SPNKr launchers, and Odd reloaded the RPG launcher. They simuetanously leapt up, and unloaded their payload. Odd's RPG rounds struck the Banshee escorts and the Phantoms. The rockets detonated amongst the ground troops, scattering them into chaos.

Odd whispered into his COM, "Marines, guerilla tactics. Stay in cover."

Instantly, the Marines were firing short bursts into the Covenant, then disappeared, to seemingly rematerilzed a few feet away. The Grunts panicked so much that they began shooting randomly, some of them hitting their own.

Odd saw a second too late as a Brute crouched down and yell into a COM device. A few minutes later, Covenant started pouring out of the ship.

Marines hefted SPNKrs and fired them into tightly packed clusters of Covenant, and stacatto bursts of fire kept the Covenant down. Many Marines switched to Covenant weapons, to conserve ammunition.

Blobs of green and blue plasma fell Covenant. Needler shards rained upon the Covenant, ricoctheing everywhere.

Suddenly, a strange sound filled the air. Odd looked up, and saw the ship moving, but why? Then Odd realized it in a flash. They were going to bombard the forest!

Odd yelled into his COM "Fall Back! Fall back!"

Aelita then took over the COM. "We'll never make it! The only safe place is on the grav lift and into the ship! Marines! Prepare for boarding action!"

* * *

William woke up in pain. Lots of pain. He moved slightly, and spurts of pain racked his body. He tried to speak,no sound came out. His vision slowly came to him, as well as his hearing. A steady beep could be heard. William painfully got up. A doctor strode into the room. 

"Son. You'd better get some rest. That was some surgery we had to perform. And of course, the other things." The doctor said.

"What things?" William asked, throut dry.

"Just some augumentations...never mind. Just take some rest. Easy now." The doctor pushed William back onto the cot, and William fell into an empty void, a voice echoing," And of course, the other things."


	14. Covenant

Disclaimer: I don't own Code Lyoko

* * *

William got off the bed, and ripped off the IV. Blood started to seep out of the prick, but instantly clotted. A red haze clouded William' eyes, and William howled an unearthy war cry. Then all of a sudden, the feeling was gone. The red haze disappeared, and William felt drained. 

The same doctor came in again, accompanied by a pair of guards and a technician.

"William. How do you feel?" the doctor asked.

"Drained. Something washed over me, an urge to kill." William replied in a low voice.

"William. You represent the rebel's super weapon. You are a, as the UNSC would call, Spartan. We operated on you, one, to save your life, two, to turn you into a Spartan. You have the right genetics we needed. Come follow me. We'll take a full medical exam later. War is on the horizon, and you need your new gear."

"New gear?" William questioned.

"No time. Hurry." The doctor breifly replied.

They strode down the hall, turned left, and down another. They passed several security "outposts", desgned to prevent infiltration. Down a flight of stairs, past a security gate, Down yet another hall, and finally, into a large, well light room.

William looked on with awe at what hung in the center of the room. It was a full SPI Mark XII suit, or at least, what appeared to be.

"Hurry. Onto the platform. Spread out your arms." the technician said.

William got onto the platform, and raised his arms. The techian began fitting the armor onto William, with the help of 4 other technicians.

20 minutes later, the suit was on William.

"Alright. Power on suit."

A technician at an control panel flipped some switches, and high voltage wires connected to the armor fed electricity to start the suit.

William clenched his fingers, and unclenched them. The suit mimicked his actions. William felt powerful.

"Energize shields."

The technician pulled a lever, and a surge of power charged the shield matrices. A shield shimmered into place around William.

"Put fusion reactor online."

A few pushes later, the suit thrummed to life, then quieted down to a near silent pur, then into nothing.

"Fusion core stabilzed." the technician at the panel replied.

"This is a suit, built entirely from scratch. This suit is modeled after the newer SPI suits, and the Mjolnir armor. It has camo and shield capabilites, and can enhance your strength by 3 fold.

The first technician then handed him a long, rectangular rifle.( On google, search for tau plasma rifle.)

"This is a plasm pulse rifle. It is some of the most potent rifles ever invented. This rifle has an effective range of 500 yards. It has some light anti-armor capabilties. This pulse rifle is powered by these energy cells, or can be powered by your suit by attaching this cord from the butt of the rifle to this port here. This rifle is also linked to your HUD, so it will tell you how much ammunition you have."

William took the rifle from him, and slid home a cell. It was light. and was perfectly balanced.William cocked the rifle, and polarized the visor.

* * *

Odd yelled out "Charge!!!" 

The Marines ran out of cover, throwing grenades and firing their weapons to cover their advance.

Odd engaged some Covenant in close combat, breaking their bodies apart. He tossed aside a Grunt, a limp rag doll.

All around him, meelee ensued, but Odd was painfully aware that the ship was almost into position.

Odd abandoned the Brute he was fighting and ran for the lift.

"Rally to me Marines!" Odd yelled.

The Marines ran onto the lift, and formed a circle on it, guns outward. They staggered their fire, so that there was a continous rain of fire in a full 360 degrees.

Just as the ship fired, the lift engaged and sucked the UNSC into the belly of the ship.

The detonation was spectacular sight, red plasma burning away the trees, vaporizing everything in a wall of red plasma. Brute, Grunt, and Jackals fell in scores, instantly killed by their own brethern, by weapons meant for full size space battles. It was a testimony to just how much firepower the Covenant could muster. It was a lightning bolt from Zeus, annilating all. And when the plasma dissipated, all that was left was a mile wide crater of glass. Nothing survived, not even a needler, or a scrap of armor. this just proved how much technology the Covenant had at their disposal, and the willingness the destroy the enemy, even if it cost unnessecessary losses

Odd and the Marines materialized inside a bay. It was surprisingly empty. Odd ordered the Marines to take firing positions on the ridge that went along the whole bay.

"Covenant security patrols have been sent to restablish the lift and troop presence on the ground." Aelita said. "I'm hacking into the Covenant battle network, and I'm going to try to intercept some communications."

Odd waved at the Marines, ordering them to be silent and crouch low into the shadows. Odd bent low and dropped something on the floor, then Odd climbed onto the ridge, and turned his camo. Covenant filed into the room, unaware of the stowaways. A tank and a couple of squads walked to the platform, and beamed down to the ground. A few seconds later, a replacement grav lift was beamed down along with Grunt worker teams. Group by group they went, until no more were left.

Odd reached into his satchel and pulled out a remote control. He flipped the idiot proof cap, and pressed the detonator. On the ground, a semi-nuclear blast blew, destroying the platform, and killing the Covenant.

"The ship's captain is unaware. He is now moving to a new planet, under orders of some supreme command. They are to attack a planet. I have yet to decode the coordinates." Aelita reported.

Odd nodded, and listened the rumble of the alien ship's engines.

* * *


	15. Descent

Disclaimer: I dont own these stuff.

* * *

Aelita ran counter-intelligence programs, and shut down external and internal sensors. She then created a fasle feed of info to replace the data from the sensors. She looked for the life support systems, and deactivated them in the lower decks. Aelita uploaded the external and internal sensors into her directry, and slaved them to her control. Strangely, the sensors showed that the life support systems were still functioning. 

Queer. They should have shut down. Aelita scanned the system for any bugs or faults. As she was searching a secondary database, she detected another electronic presense. A very basic program. Aelita suspected that this was a basic electronic "guard dog" designed to maintain control of the ship by electronical means. Aelita retreated to her "fort", a primary database fortified with counter-intelligence programs.

She dug into her bag of tricks, and created several decoys. She sent them out, trying to attract the security systems of the Covenant ship. If the decoys worked, Aelita could isolate the program, destroy it, or slave it to her control.

Aelita watched, and waited.

* * *

Odd jumped down, and cocked his rifle. His active camo flickered, then died. It would take about 20 minutes to charge to full capacity again. Odd switched to reserves, and his camo shimmered back. Odd set it at 70 percent, to conserve power. Aelita said that there were some problems, and unless he wanted to face a shipful of Covenant, he would have to wait in the bay. 

Odd though, crept to a door, and activated it. He turned the corner, and nobody. He walked down the hall, image shimmering. Odd came to another hall. He opened it to reveal a large room, a vehicle depot, with Ghosts, Wraiths, Choppers, and Spectres lined up in orderly rows. Odd crept along the walkways that ran around the room(Odd came to the"second story of the room, a bunch of walkways. ).

Jackals patrolled around the the walkways, barking sharp orders to the Grunt workers and weird tentacled creatures outfitting the vehicles.

Odd snuck up behind a Jackal, and slit his throut. The Jackal went down silently, and Odd dragged the body to what appeared to be a janitors closet.

"What are you doing?" Aelita hissed into his ear.

"Scouting around," Odd replied nonchanatly. "Could you shut down the power in this room? I need to take out those Jackals."

"Fine. but keep your suit sealed, because I am trying to vent some lower decks, and the security programs on this ship may bumble it up and make it so that these decks vent."

Seconds later, the power flickered out. Jackals barked out orders, trying to keep the Grunts calm.

One by one, Odd silently killed the Jackals, and hid their bodies. Odd crept back to the bay, and ordered the Marines to climb down.

"I did some scouting, and I found a vehicle bay. Down there, I spotted a door that leads to the bridge. Lets get moving, men."

* * *

Ulrich watched the PDF troops suit up in standard millitary armor, taken from the supply depot. 

"Red 2, report our statis." Ulrich said.

"Red Team fully functional, Blue Team, one down, one 10 man squad of Marines,3 Special Forces, 15 police/security guards, 4 Navy pilots and about 90 PDF troopers." Red 2 reported.

Blue team had coordinated rescue missions, and gathered the remaining UNSC personnel. With the supply depot at their disposal, they could kit out everybody with a full combat pack. An assualt rifle, 10 clips to go with it, 6 frags, 2 flashes, 1 smoke, a M9 pistol, and 6 clips for it.

"Alright. Get some Warthogs, and a Scorpion MBT ready. Active 10 MAKOs, and have them scout. Looke for potential targets. Get a Pelican ready, and load it with men, and a Warthog. Get a coupla APCs too. Use them to transport supplies and men. I want everything set in 1700."

"Yes sir!" Red Team and Blue team scrambled to fufill Ulrich's orders.

Ulrich walked over to a rack. At his request, he had a proto-type for the Battle Rifle sent to him. It came with the Pelican, but Ulrich had never gotten to get it.

Even though it was the prototype, Ulrich prefered it over the actual rifle. The prototype had 60 clips, and was designed to switch between single, full, or burst.

He opened the box containing the rifle. He picked it up and weighed in his hands. He checked the optical auto-zoom, and inspected the ammunition. He discovered that the rifle had the same clip as the MA5B, which no doubt, was purposely made like that. Ulrich dug into the box and pulled out the standard clip-on grenade launcher, and attached it to the rifle barrel's underside. Again, with practicality in mind, the launcher was adapted to launch standard grenades.

Finished inspecting the rifle, Ulrich confidently slid a clip home.

* * *

Daigon accessed a door, and strode through. Standing guard were 2 Marines. They warily saluted Daigon, which Daigon prompty returned. Using his status to bypass all the doors, he strode into the port's security facility. Here, there was a small office for millitary ops. 

Daigon burst into the millitary ops center. It had just a few monitors, and some techies coordinating some Pelicans.

"As of now, I declare that all millitary ops personnel must report to me. I will be needing a planetary transport, and live feed from the Capitolis city."

"I thought there was a team already on station to monitor rebel actions sir!"

"No there isn't. I need maps, tactical data, and live satillite feed. I expect to be there at 0100 hours, connected to a live feed, with a complement of Marines. Understand?"

"Yes sir!"

A technician walked up to Daigon, and handed him a datapad. "Sir, there is a Pelican schelduled to land at this location in 2 hours. I crossed referanced the location with satillite imaging, and it shows that this is right in the middle of hostile territory. Another check with mission logs show that this is the battle-center of UNSC ground actions."

Daigon studied the datapad. He noticed that there was some missile silos nearby the location, as well as the city's citidel. The satallite images showed entrenchments of anti-air guns, and mobile MAKO drone charging racks.

"Do we have any millitary defense network ships in orbit?" Diagon asked. Actual Navy battleships would not work for his plan. He needed pinpoint accuracy.

"Yes sir. The _Dawn of Light _and the _Haven of Truth _are on standby. We also have 7 orbital Super MAC guns stations in orbit, and a current Navy fleet of 9 ships." the technician answered.

"Right. Hail the _Dawn of Light _and tell her captian to move to this location" Daigon said pointing on the screen.

"On it sir!" the technician replied.

Daigon looked out the window of the office. He could see a ship swing into low orbit, the lowest possible for a ship like this. Millitary defense network ships were ships on permanant planetary defense. They also provided ground troops on the planet with supplies and extra troops. Pinpoint Hellfire OS (orbital strike) missiles meant that ground troops had a ton of extra firepower. The fuses on the missiles could be adjusted so collateral damage was minimized, as well as the risk of harming friendly troops.

"Lock Hellfire missiles to points listed here." Daigon ordered, handing a techy the datapad.

The technician complied, and sent the coordinates to the ship. Suddenly, a man burst into the room.

"What the hell are you doing?" The man shouted. 3 gold stars gleamed on his collar.

"Sir!" Daigon snapped to attention. "Coordinating counter-offensives to rebel actions sir!"

"But commanding a ship to open fire on Capitolis!?!?! Capitolis maybe in rebel control, but for heaven's sake, you can't go around bombarding cities willy-nilly!"

"With all due respect sir, he can. As of this moment, I authorize Colonel Daigon full command of counter-offensive rebel actions." Yumi said, holding up a datapad. On it was her file. Her status showed that she was part of ONI Navspecweap Subsection 3.

The general took a deep breath to calm himself. He looked at Daigon with a steely eye and said,"Very well then. But I still reserve right to observe actions taken by the Colonel."

"Affirmative," Yumi said cooly.

Daigon looked away and out the bay window. What other secrets did Yumi hold? ONI spooks didn't usually reveal their status. He just pondered, and watched the _Dawn of Light_ open fire on rebel entrenchments.

* * *

Glin waddled down the hall, bowing before each passing Jiralhanae(Brute), as a respectfully Unggoy(Grunt) would. Any sign of disrespectfullness from a Unggoy could mean death. Or worse. He checked the charge of his plasma pistol idly. He waved to his fellow Unggoy playing a simple gambling game. Glin wiped his brow, and looked at his meter for his tank of methane. It was about 3/4s full. The ship was a buzz about the attack. They would lead the spearhead of ships to attack the vile aliens world, and destroy them! 

A pair of Kig-Yar(Jackals) stalked past, glaring. Glin nervously bowed, and quickly shuffled away. He walked onto a walk way overlooking the vehicle bay. Huragoks(Engineers) were busy fixing damaged vehicles, with Unggoy workers.. Jiralhanae looked on, supervising the repair.Yanme'e(Drones) buzzed back and forth, doing the most menial of the jobs.

There was a rumor going that some aliens were aboard the ship somewhere, hiding, waiting for the right time to strike. Glin personally didn't believe this, but who knew with those aliens?

* * *

Daigon slipped down to the bay. Pelicans roared in and out. He spotted the Pelican he was to board, as it was the only real Millitary class Pelican. Marines surrounded the dropship, checking their gear. Daigon of course, was already fully armed and ready to go.

"Marines! Into the Pelican!" Daigon yelled.

The Marines scrambled and harnessed themsleves in. Daigon climbed aboard, signaling to the pilot. The pilot wordlessly took off, and started for Capitolis.

* * *

Srry for the delay ppl.

As the holidays draw near, I would like to turn your attention to the story Mistletoe by Moon Scarr, I think... It is marked in my favorites, and a nice story to read for this Christmas.


	16. Da big guns

Disclaimer: I dont own anything!!!!

* * *

William strode down the hall, checking his rifle on the way. He was flanked by 2 guards, armed with what seemed like plasma rifles. William was one of the few who'd ever seen the destructive weapons of the aliens. William supposed that his rifle and theirs were based on it's design. His improved hearing picked up distant retorts of gun fire. Earlier, there had been orbital bombardments, which had destroyed most of their defenses. Well, most of the _obvious_ ones. When the rebels took the city, they had made sure to put defenses that were concealed from view. Plus, there were rumors going on in the city that the techies were experimenting with plasma technology stolen from the Covenant, and were trying to produce an orbital cannon strong enough to destroy ships in orbit. Of course, this would be impossible, without a certain genius, which William was all to familair with.

* * *

Odd and the Marines were in a cramped storage room. One of the Marine Techies was trying to modify the Wraith tank that was stored here, but so far, no luck. Aelita was helping him the best she could, but she could only devote 5 percent of her processing power to help, as she was preoccupied with the ship's security AIs. The Marine hoped to get an interface from the Wraith to a control panel he'd brought, so he could upload the data and hopefully, make it easier for them to fight back using the Covenant's own weapons. With the data he could potentially obtain, he could probably use the panel to interface with a Scarab walker, and control the whole thing by himself with out the help of an AI. 

Odd peered out the door, looking for any sign of Covenant.

"You know, you never really explained your plan to me. I mean, after you got on, what were you going to do?" Aelita questioned.

"Hopefully, overload the ship's reactors when it reaches a Covenant homeworld, escape on a dropship, and infiltrate another ship, and take over that one by venting the ship, and escape into Slipspace. If there are more ships, charge the capicitor, and tghe weapons, and right before we jump, we hit 'em." Odd replied.

"You know, that plan has little chance of ever working. There are too many improbabilities." Aelita retorted.

" Ah well. Then either make our way down to the shuttle bay, and escape. Or, you can vent the decks and we can steal the ship, bring it to somewhere where the Cole Protocal wouldn't be breached, and there, were back home, with a treasure load of technology for them ONI spooks to work on." Odd said

"Definitely better." Aelita agreed. "Wait. Marines! Seal your suits! use reserve tanks! Im going to vent these decks!"

"I thought you said you didn't have control." Odd asked.

"I don't. I'm simply going to trick the computer into thinking that this deck is actually breached. I've examined the structure of their life support systems. It's a simple yes , no trick. For example, the computer thinks the decks are sealed when the systems say yes. When they say no, they simply activite the bulkheads. So, Im going to trick the computer into thinking that yes is no, and no is yes."

"I dont get it." Odd said.

"What ever. Just seal your suit. In 3,2,1..."Aelita said.

At first, Odd didn't hear anything. Then, a low rumbling sound filled the air, then it was quiet. The door at the end of the bay opened, a red light above it blinking. Random junk tumbled out of the bulkhead,An invisible, silent arm reached out and tried to pull him off his hold, the vaccum of space was stronger than he'd expected. A Marine lost his grip, and was about tumple into the empty void of space, when Odd grabbed him with one of his hands.

"Aelita. Close. The. Door. Now." Odd said out of clenched teeth.

"Not yet. The subdecks have yet to be vented. just a few more seconds."

Even with the prestigious strength of a Spartan, Odd was having trouble keeping his grip on the cracks in the floor. With only one hand to support him, the Marine in full gear, and his half a ton of Spartan armor, Odd was seriously strained.

Odd silently counted down the seconds in his mind. 5... his grip started to loosen. 4...a finger slid off its grip.3...Odd was holding on with only 2 fingers. 2...Odd lost his grip and started to tumble out. 1... The bay door slammed shut, and odd slammed into the bay door right before it closed.

"Ouch..." Odd grumbled inwardly. He unclipped his rifle from his belt, and checked the clip. Full.

"Aelita... Is there anyone left on the ship?" Odd asked, wincing.

"No... there shouldn't be unless they were wearing atmosphere suits. Plus, in that confusion, I seized control of the ship. I also purged the systems, so this is a completely UNSC controlled ship right now." Aelita answered.

"Sir! I've managed to get an interface with this Wraith tank! " the techy shouted.

"You were working on that thing the whole time?" Odd asked.

"Yes sir!" the Marine replied proudly.

"Well than soldier. Fork it over. I'll upload it into Aelita's systems." Odd said.

"Already done." Aelita cut off. "I uploaded it via a wireless link. We should head toward the bridge. Actually, lets head to the brig. I didn't vent those decks because of fear of harming any UNSC prisoners."

"Alright. Marines! Fall in! Hunt and kill! Go go go!" Odd yelled out. "Treat the ship as hostile territory!"

Odd keyed the controls to the door. The door slid open and Odd rushed through. There was a body of a Brute on the floor, dead from suffocation. But just to make sure, he gave the Brute a dead check with a single shot to the head. When Odd looked up, the Marines had already established defensive positons around him in the various corridors.

* * *

Jason adjusted his pack, and looked out the bay doors. The Pelican dipped slowly forward, following the first Pelican. He nervously gripped his rifle, and checked his equipment again. A red cross on his helmet identifed him as a medic, but now, to Theo, it seemed to light up his head to enemy snipers. Plus, with the extra medical equipment, he didn't have that much room for weapons. So, all he had was his rifle, 2 clips for it, a pistol, and a single clip for that. No grenades either. 

The pilot's voice crackled over the COM. "ETA 10 minutes. Lock and load Marines."

* * *

Theo had always been a person with an eye for the sky, so that was why he signed up for UNSC Navy. He was signed as a Pelican dropship pilot, shifted to a Longsword pilot, then to planetary defense network pilot, where he flew various fighter jets, and transports. Then he got shifted back to a Pelican pilot. 

He flew in low and fast. Well, as fast as the Pelican could manage. The other Pelican fell in formation behind him. That's when he would rememeber where everything would go wrong.

AA emplacements(anti-aircraft) hidden from view opened up on the vunerable Pelicans. Theo wrestled the controls, strafing left and right, trying to dodge the deadly hail of fire.

"This is Bravo-56, we're taking heavy fire. I repeat, taking heavy fire!" Theo's copilot, Max, yelled into the COM.

Suddenly, a light flicked on. "Damn! They have a missile lock!" Max yelled.

Theo swore under his breath. "Hold on tight!" Theo called out.

Theo pulled the controls to swerve to the left, then to the right. He pulled up to a 45 degree angle. "Max, don't we have a heat waffle?"

"Eh...no..." Max replied. Then Max sat up and tapped the radar screen. "Problem."

"What?" Theo said irratibly, still flying through evasive actions. Theo glanced at the screen. "MAKOs..." he whispered.

"5 of 'em." Max said. "And according to this, they all have missile locks on us."

* * *

Ulrich looked up at the sky. He saw the orbital bombardment fall down on the rebels 30 minutes ago hard, with pinpoint accuracy. He scanned the sky , looking for the Pelicans that were supposed to be due any minute now. He saw a 2 pinpricks in the distance, flying low. The Pelicans, he assumed. Then, they started swerving back and forth. This got Ulrich confused. The AA guns were out, so why was evasive action needed? 

Ulrich tapped the controls on his face plate, which zoomed in on the Pelicans. What was more important however, was that there were MAKOs tailing them, and he could see the magnesium tracer rounds of AA gun emplacements.

Ulrich clicked on his COMlink. "Teams, we need those vehicles. Get the Scorpion and a coupla Warthogs up here. CENTCOM missed some AA guns."

"Yes sir!" Came Blue 2's reply.

Now all Ulrich could do was sit back, and wait for the Pelicans. He shifted over and pulled out a SPNKr launcher, and braced himself, waiting for them to come closer.

* * *


	17. We're hit!

Disclaimer

* * *

A powerful hum reverbarated throughout the room. Jeremie studied the computer data as the test ship's new reactors came online. The test ship was a class-C military transport ship, which was projected to replace the Pelican in 10 years. The ship had a sleek design, unlike the Pelican. It would have far better manueverbility, speed, and it already had a cloaking device. 

"Green across the board," said a technician.

"Activite shield unit now." Jeremie said, glancing up from the computer screen.

A shield shimmered into place overvunerable areas on the craft, concentrated mainly on the cockpit, the enginens, and the transport bay entrance.

The hum of the reactors grew louder, straining to power the all-consuming shields. After, about 20 seconds, the shields collapsed.

"Dammit" Jeremie swore under his breath.

He locked down the reactor, as well as the shield. Jeremie strode out to the ship, and walked inside. Glancing at the reactor, he realized that his college who had designed the reactor, had made a serious flaw. Jeremie was surprised that he didn't see it before.

The output of the engine was great, but the control mechinisms in a standard reactor limited the output to a certain point, so there wouldn't be power surges. On this reactor, The safety output control mechinisms were the standard reactor ones, which's output of power was twice as low. So, the reactor that Jeremie was testing wasn't at it's full potential, and with the buildup of power restrained by the safety mechinisms, the reactor was a ticking timebomb.

Jeremie unscrewed the mechanisms, for readjustments later. Using a screwdriver, he pried open the reactor's workings. After about a 5 hours of work replacing, adding, taking away, and adjusting components. The fourth test could begin soon.

* * *

The old Pelican looked odd. It had the basic look of a standard Pelican, but it was covered with antenneas, satilite dishes, and had plates of extra armor and radar-reflecting sheets welded onto most of it. 

It swooped low, flying across the desert, streaking across the night sky.

Inside, William checked his rifle. It was full charge. A green light flashed in the troop bay. It was the signal to get ready. The men inside the Pelican checked their gear, slapping clips into guns, checking holsters.

The Pelican desended down onto a plateau. William's and his bodyguard's plamsa guns glowed red. Some troopers established rappel lines off the plateau, while some troopers set up sniper's nests. The Pelican's engines faded away, it's engine baffles reducing the noise. William began helping throw camo netting over the Pelican, careful not to cover the engines, as a quick escape was probably needed.

William went over to the lines and rappelled down, where troopers had already established a perimeter. William noted a Marine guard's body. There was a dart sticking out of his neck.

"We have successfully landed. Proceeding." William radioed back to the citidel.

"Affirmative. Remember, seizing Jeremie without no bodily harm to him is crucial. Understand?"

"Yes... I do." William replied in anticipation.

* * *

Theo held onto the joystick tightly, trying to shake the missiles. He veered right then left. Anti aircraft shells exploded all around him, some of them in blinding flashes of exploding magnesuim. 

Theo swore agian under his breath.

"This is Bravo-56. Taking heavy fire here. I repeat, taking heavy fire. Request to abort."

There was no reply. Just static.

"Bravo-56! Bravo-56! this is Bravo-55! We're hit! We're hit! We're going down!" the other Pelican copilot yelled through the COM.

"Oh, crap..." Max said.

Suddenly, a thunderous explosion rocked the ship. Suddenly, the cockpit lit up in a mass of blinking lights.

Max looked out the window. "Shit! We lost a wing!"

"Holy crap." Theo said.

A AA magneisum round exploded right in front of the cockpit, blinding the Theo and Max.

Twin explosions hit the weaken ship, dropping it from the sky.

"Dawn of Light! Respond! We are going down! Respond! Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell" Max shouted at the COM.

The ground accelerated up, and then, there was nothing but black.


	18. Fire away

Disclaimer: This is routine!

* * *

Theo hit the release on his harness. and pulled himself up painfully. He dragged his bleeding over his forehead, clearing away the blood. He turned to look at Max. Max was a terrible sight to see. His head hanging at an odd angle, neck snapped. Blood was everywhere. Theo turned his head away in horror. His heart was racing, wondering what he would find in the bay. He keyed open the door, and took a long look. 

Every Marine survived the crash, but the majority was injured beyond fighting capability. Daigon though, survived with a mild concussion.

"Alright... Theo, you and Jason take care of the wounded Marines. You, Marine, stay with them. The rest of you, we're going to see if anyone survived, and pull together."

Daigon tapped the keys on the bay door hatch. Surprisingly, they still worked. Daigon and his 3 Marines walked out. Theo closed the door behind them, and remote locked it.

"c'mon Jason... We got work to do"

* * *

Daigon looked around him, taking in his surroundings. 

"Marines, we'll need to get the other crash...and at the same time, protect this one Pelican, and if there is any survivors in the other one, we gotta protect them too."

"You" Daigon said, tapping the Marine with the sniper rifle on the shoulder. "Get in that building, and use your heat vision goggles to scope out the area. Report to me on a private single link COM link, then stay there. Warn Theo if any searchers come, and try to take them out without getting spotted."

"Yes Sir!" HE ran off to the building.

Daigon faced the two other Marines. "Let's move out!

* * *

Ulrich scanned the skies in dismay. Nothing...Not even a trail of smoke. The Warthog jolted along, a convoy of 13 Warthogs and 4 Scorpion tanks rupmbling forth behind him. 

He shoved the field glasses back into their compartment and scanned the surrounding area with his battle rifle.

The jolts from sitting in the passenger seat really threw off his aim, but with the Optix scope attached to the rifle, he could overlay heat vision and x-ray vison together to scann the surrounding buildings.

The crash was quite a distance away from them and it took a while to organize the convoy.

Blue team was attacking the citedel themselves, and as soon as the rescue mission was concluded, the convoy would split off to help, while some APV's carried the wounded back.

* * *

Blue Team crept forward, with the 40 man platoon following close behind. 

Blue 2 looked upwards, and leveled a C10L. THe grenade launcher's crosshairs pulled apart, it's computer searching for a target to lock onto.

Blue 2 calculated carefully, adjusting his aim. Slowly, with presicion, he slid the modified fragmentation grenade into the chamber, twisting it to the right spot. The grenade's fuse was lengthened to a fuse of 15 seconds.

Blue 3 nodded. Blue 2 squeezed the trigger, sending the grenade up into the sky. The citidel's auto-turrets tracked the grenade, spinning to get an angle to fire.

The turrets spat out depleted uranium slugs, detonating the grenade in mid air. What they failed to track however, was a missle Blue 3 launched at one of the turrets. It was a common and deadly programming error, which Blue Team exploited. They also exploited the fact that if one turret was destroyed, the other turrets could not cover the area where the destroyed turret covered, as they had only a 70 degree mobility.

Blue 4, the sniper of the team, fired thrice, each a fatal shot, which felled 3 guards.

Some time in between this, Blue 5 fired a single smoke grenade up into the air with a C5L rifle clip on grenade launcher.

The smoke grenade arched down, and landed right into the manuelly armed turret, blinding the occupants. The smoke was also had a heavy corrosive in it. It would make the turret completely useless. A luck shot could even put a tank out of action. For some unknown reason, it is not harmful to organics, meaning it was nearly completely enviromently sound.

Blue 2 slung the launcher over his shoulder and pulled out his rifle. Using his helmet's various functions, he overlayed the live time view with a 3D digital battle plan showing where the turrets "blind" spot was. He crept forward, under the cover of random shots fired onto the battlements. When he reached the wall, He projected on the building schematics onto his visor. HE took out breaching charges, and placed them where the old steel support columns were.

The charges were placed accordingly so that the wall would outward, but send a cloud of dust inward. Blue 2 worked along the whole perimeter, hugging close to the wall, barely inside the auto turret's deep zone. Soon, he came close to the main gate. Blue 2 stopped, flicking on his active camo. He knew he couldn't sneek by, he would have to stay in the narrow deep zone, because one of the various dectectors on the turrets was motion sensor. He would literarly go right through the guards to pass. So Blue 2 head back, and worked the other way until he got to the other side of the gate.

He ran back to his team, were they proceed to back away a few hundred yards to aviod any falling debris.

The self timer on his visor activated, standard 10 second fuse.

Blue 2 voiced out " Timer override code WOLFONTHELOOSE" to the computer.

The timer shifted to 0:00, blinking red, then, the explosion of 25 charges detonating rocked the ground. With his enhanced vision, BLue 2 could even see the shockwave, billowing outwards.

Blue 3 waved his hand. Some Marines equiped with overlay-infrared-goggles homed in on various targets with compact C35 Stingers. The Stinger had a multichamber, meaning the firer could fire 6 rockets in a row within 10 seconds. The multichamber made it easy and quick to reload.

As far as Blue 2 could see, the plan was going accordingly...sort of. Blue 2 had expected for reinforcements to fill the in-grounds bunkers, and return fire with everything they had. But, he could see the bunkers were empty, turrets loose in their cradles.

He flicked on thevisor, examining the bunkers. Useless. There was simply to much dust, and the bunkers were lead lined.

"Alright... I think that they're hiding inside the bunkers, crouched down. There must be some sort of proximity sensor, so when we get within a "kill zone", They'll pop up, and massacre us with a crossfire."

"Or, they could have remote mines..." Blue 3 pointed out. "Any explosion wouldn't trigger them. Only a remote control would detonate them, or a breacher charge placed on top of it."

"Either way, we should set up sniper posts to get a superior angle, and bombard the citidel itself with some rockets."

"Affirmative."

* * *

Odd looked around. Nothing. They had traversed the lower decks, encountering little or no resistance. 

It was quite strange. Normally, security teams would have been already sent. If one of the teams even remotely thought that they saw something, hunter-killer teams would be sent.

Odd approached the door, placing an omnitool on the door. The door's locks disengaged, and Odd stepped back. The Marines Gathered behind him, guns pointed at the door. The backmost Marines aimed their guns backwards, making sure no one snuck up on them.

Odd pressed the open key, and the doors slid back. No one was inside. Odd advanced cautiously into the room, Marines following close behind. They set up a parameter, guns aimed at all entrances. In the center of the room, was the grav-lift, to carry troops and supplies around the ship. Odd walked towards the lift, when suddenly, the a second lift descended, and on it, was a hunter-killer team.

* * *


	19. Deep Space

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Code Lyoko, Halo, or anything else KK?

Srry for the enourmous time/update delay

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... to sorta make it up, im shooting for two thousand words, more than the usual one thousand word chapter goal i set...

* * *

Ulrich jumped out of the Warthog, ducking under cover, just as a spray of bullets peppered the side of the 'Hog. The Marine gunner was busy spraying down the enemy lines with the 'Hogs LAAG. Ulrich hefted his rifle, and joined in the hail of bullets. It was a tactical nightmare. Ulrich's Warthog was leading, and was passing through a narrow roadway, just about to enter a plaza square. On the other road leading out, were entrenched rebels. They had no heavy weapons, but they were pinning down the Warthog with a fair amount of fire. ON a narrow road like this, the other Warthogs couldn't move around to fire. Ulrich knew this was a strategic location that needed to be captured, but he hadn't known the resistance would be this heavy already.

Ulrich pulled back the charging lever on his BRM-60P(Battle Rifle Model 60-shot Prototype. (This is a made up name, with no basis on anything whatsoever, except the BR part), and slid in a new clip. He cleared the chamber, and loaded a frag grenade in the weapon's C5L clip-on.

He flipped up the sights for the C5L, and synced it with the battle rifle's scope.

A rotating crosshair appeared over the battle rifle's standard crosshair, and Ulrich squeezed the secondary trigger.

The grenade propelled out of the C5L, and detonated on impact 5 yards off. Useless.

Ulrich swore. With the heavy amount of fire they were taking, he couldn't line up a proper shot. Even with the Warthog's turret, they were having trouble pinning them down.

"Get a fixed machine turret and over here from one of the APCs double time!" Ulrich ordered into his COMlink.

"Yes sir!" One of the Marines replied.

* * *

Fire poured in from all sides.

Corporal Lance Fitzgerald swore, and slung his S2 sniper rifle on his back. He strapped his M6D to his side, and picked up the ammo scattered around him. He also picked up his ruck sack, which contained a MA2K, a cutdown version of the MA5B, with an impressive 20 rounds per second.

Private Henry Jacobs lay on the ground, half stunned. The grenade explosion had thrown them off the APC transporting them with the Spartans to the citidel.

The Corporal pulled out a medi-kit, and grabbed a mild stimulus from it. He injected it into the Private, who, slowly and painfully, got to his feet.

"Man... Where the hell are we?" Jacobs asked.

Being a newly ordained Corporal, Lance wasn't used to having command.

"I don't know. One thing I know is, is that there are some god damned sons of bitches around here, and we got to clear this place out for the supply APCs."

"You got it!" said Private Jacobs.

The Private scooped up an assualt rifle and racked a shell into the chamber. "Let's do this!"

* * *

Up in space, Milly surveyed the surrounding area. She leaned on the command pulpit of her cruiser. Milly,against her will, was drafted into the Navy. When she finally accepted this, she quickly rose through the ranks. She was even taught by the Schoolmaster himself, Captain Jacob Keyes (most ppl dont know he taught at a Navy Academy... check the Halo Novels ; )...), and she ended up here, a proud Admiral with a modest record for a newly ordained Rear Admiral.

"Damage report!" she called out.

"Armor integrity at 60. Decks E and F are compromised. Reactors intact. " said Leiutenant Harvey.

Milly's destoyer, _Stalingrad II, _limped insystem. They had come out of a nasty battle with three Covanant frigates, a pair of destoyers, and a carrier, and won, barely. The _Stalingrad II _all that was left of three ship force that Milly commanded.

"Set course for that refitting station, the _Light Overhead. _" Milly ordered.

"Aye aye, m'am." Leiutenant Faresky said. The Leitenant inputed the coordinates, and estabilshed a connection with the station.

It would take a few hours for the station to fully repair the _Stalingrad II. _The destroyer slowly docked in, and repair workers in jetpacks jettesioned out of the station's repair scaffolds, cutting away loose scraps of titanium, and rewelding plates over the holes. Refitting workers started the slow process of reloading the ship's arsenal, starting with the ship's Archer pod missiles, and the ship's Shiva nuclear warheads. A loading crane shifted a Longsword into the the starboard shuttlebay. A ferry transported supplies into the ship, things like ammunition, food, fuel, etc. The _Stalingrad II _had been out fighting for almost 6 monthes out without a fully complete stock resupply, and was in a desparate need for food and fuel for the Longswords and Pelicans.

* * *

Almost at the edge of the system, green motes of light blurred the black backdrop of space. A Covenant fleet nosed through, in perfect formation. Their shields shimmered slightly more then usual, the side effects of Slipspace cloaking. The predatoral shaped ships eased on through, on a direct course for the sysem's only inhabital planet, Corasis.

* * *

Socrates navigation post: Standard Military time: 0234

"Sir! Covenant ships detected in our long range system! Estimating their numbers at almost 73! Initiating Cole Protocal!" a desparate Ensign yelled.

"Damn. The Covenant here? Already? How come we didn't detected them with our Slipspace COM probes?" The commanding officer said.

"I don't know sir. Radiaion backdrop are significantly higher. AI suggests a sort of Slipspace cloaking field." the Ensign said.

"Wait!" the Ensign continued. "The data network! It's not purging! The Astropath library is still online! There's no way to shut it down!"

"Oh shit! If the Covenant find it, they'll know everything." The Officer looked down. " File that report, and send out a red alert. Tag the location of the fleet, and a directional analysis." The Officer paused. "Son, we've done our best. It was nice serving with you."

The Ensign looked at the Officer confusedly, then nodded slowly as it dawned upon him.

The officer placed his palm on a digital reader, which overrode the reactor's safeties. Deutriuim from their reserve tanks as well as their main tanks flooded the reactor.

A photo fell off the data pad the officer carried. It was a picture of his wife, and his newborn child, whom the officer who'd never even seen yet. The war was extremely pressing. The officer slowly stooped down, and picked it up.

"Goodbye." The officer whispered, taking one last look at a photograph of his wife, and his son, who would never know a father.

* * *

"M'am! Covenant detected! the refitting stations are disconnecting from us now."

"Good." Milly responded.

"Push the ship at 300"

"Affirmative. Reactors red line in 45 seconds. Covanent onscreen now."

The nine other ships turned into formation. Milly's cruiser all of a sudden became the flagship of the fleet. The fleet consisted of the smaller grade ships, mostly frigates, 2 of the corvettes,and a single destroyer.

Covenant plamsa turrets turned to track the incoming ships. They opened fire, tight beams of plasma headed right for the human ships.

The Super MAC guns rotated, and fired a soundless volley of MAC rounds at the ships.

The human ships returned fire with over 10,000 Archer pod missiles (each ship has over 3,000 missiles) and about 13 MAC slugs, as well as about 21 Super MAC slugs (Each cannon can fire every 5 seconds).

The Covenant salvo raced toward the human ships, burning a bright red.

"Transfer emergency thruster controls to my station" Milly ordered. "Plot course at 2 degrees, recalculate the firing solution and brace for impact."

Klaxons rang out as her orders were carried out. Emergency thrusters were tanks of chemicals placed stratigecally on various hardpoints of ships. When the chemicalls mixed, there would be a massive reaction, effectively changing course of the ship, to push it out of harm's way, hopefully.

The human salvo impacted upon Covenant ships, Silver shields glimmered, glowed brighter, and failed, as the MAC rounds tore through them. Archer missiles arched in, in the midst of pulses of anti-missile lasers, rolling this way and that way, impacting in dozens of small puffs on the crippled ships.

Super MAC rounds fired from the orbital cannons literarly gutted the ships from stem to stern, shields or no shields. The second cycled of Super MAC rounds tore through more ships.

A crippled Covanent frigate tumbled out of formation, slamming into another. Their superstructures locked together, andtheir reactors overloaded. A mini-sun blossomed where the tangled ships were. The blast blew outwards, consuming Covanent ships in a blaze of fire. Shields flashed, shimmered, and failed.

That's when the Covenant salvo impacted. Several plasma bolts converged on a charging frigate, and blew to pieces.

Several more bolts converged on the frigates. They were vaporized instantly.

Almost 20 plasma bolts found their way past the human ships, and impacted upon one of the orbital cannons. When the haze parted, the cannon was reduced to a pile of molten slag and ionized metal.

All that was left of the human fleet was a cruiser, a destroyer and 2 badly damaged frigates.

Milly's cruiser had revolutionary reactors. 'modern' reactors were single type reators. Even more advanced reactors were like the Pi_llar of Autumn _'s it consisted of one main reactor, and two smaller reactors, which could supercharge the main reactor. What was the newest however, was a triplex reactor. One main reactor and _three_ smaller reactors. The third reactor was to give the cruiser the extra power it need. For example, when running fully operational, the reactors could supercharge, and either a) give a tremendous speed boost to the _Stalingrad II _, or charge it's three MAC guns to fire _4_ rounds per gun. This was allowed by the reactors and revolutionary realignment magnets in the MAC guns, which gathered excess power released when it was fired, and realigned for the next shot much faster than conventianal magnets.

(AN: this reactor stuff isnt a bunch of bs i made up. the Pillar of Autumn really did have a twin reactor system, and their single MAC cannon could fire 3 rounds per charge. So, with Milly's cruiser being one of the most recently built cruisers, i decided to boost up the twin reactor to the triplex, and changed 3 rounds to 4. Plus, the magnet part isnt made up either. They do exsit in the Halo universe.)

This gave Milly a tremendous advantage in battle.

"Supercharge the reactor now." Milly ordered.

"Aye aye, m'am."

A rumble filled the ship. "Ready the MAC guns, and prepare for a 12 round salvo." Milly said. "Fire on my mark."

Milly tensed, as the cruiser aligned to the incoming Covenant ships. "Adjust firing solutions and mark the targets for the rest of the fleet. Unlock safeties on Archer pods A-F. Also, unlock the safeties on two of the Shivas. Fire them at a trajectory at tree point two-six on my second mark."

"M'am! That firing solution has the nukes firing away _from_ the Covenant." a deck officer called out.

" I'm glad you agree with my calculations." said Milly with a tight lipped smile.

"Ready," Milly said, checking her watch. "And... NOW!"

The cruiser rumbled and shook as it fired salvo of MAC rounds and about 2,000 Archer pod missiles, and almost unnoticed, the two Shiva warheads erupted out of the forward missile bays and raced in the relative position of upwards.

The other ships locked into the firing solutions given to them, and opened fire as well. A wall of missiles and MAC slugs raced toward the enemy ships. Behind the human ships, the orbital cannons continued firing, a twenty one gun salute to those already dead in this engagement, and most likely casualties and deathes suffered later in the space engagement.

The Covenant ships lateral lines glowed yellow, then orange, then red as they charged up for another salvo.

The Covenant unleashed a fury of shots, easily rivalling the firepower displayed by the ragtag group of human defenders. Anti-missile pulse lasers stabbed out at the incoming shots, but there is little a defensive mechanism can do againest a fury of over 16,000 Archer pod missiles.

The MAC rounds impacted first, some shields held, some didnt. In the end, it didn't really matter. Thousands of Archer pod missiles detonated on Covenant ships. There were roughly 55 Covanant ships left, which meant each ship was hit at least by 290 archer pod missiles.

The Shiva warheads arched downward, completely forgotten by the Covenant. They detonated in the midst of the ships, and ravaged any unshielded ships, and took down the remaining Covenant shields.

Covenant ships limped through the destruction, numbering around ten, opened fire again with a suprise salvo.

The first Covenant salvo raced toward the human line.

"M'am, the reactors are about 50 percent functioning, and the emergency thrusters aren't responding. EMP from the nukes, probably."

Milly gimanced. Her options were serverily limited. "Enact evasive manevers." she said, still racking her brain for solutions.

Milly thought none. When she came to that conclusion, she yelled out, "Brace!" at the same time the radar officer called "5 seconds to impact!"

The Covenant plasma struck the crippled fleet. the frigates went down, and the _Stalingrad II_ was hit 4 times.

The frigates were vaporized, and the destroyer was almost severed in half.

Milly gripped her pulpit tightly as the ship rocked from the impact.

"Damage report!" she yelled.

"Armor intergrety 30 percent! All decks breached, and the reactor room breached as well!"

The human fleet was almost completely destroyed. Only Milly's cruiser, now extremely badly damaged, and the nearly destroyed destroyer remained. 1 out of the original 7 orbital cannons remained funtioning, and was only capable of running at 60 percent.

The second salvo reached out to destroy Milly's cruiser, but the destroyer, opened up with it's last salvo of about 50 of its remaining missiles, a nuclear warhead, a single MAC round. The destroyer manuevered in front of the the cruiser, shielding it from the salvo.

The destroyer was obliterated.

(AN: Whew, 2,400 words and still going!)

The last salvo arched Milly's way. But a ionized metal cloud had formed over the the human line of defense. All that ionized metal came from the vaporized ships, and it disrupted most of the plasma shots.

"Move this bucket of metal to align with those plasma shots. Realign MAC gun magnets, and tell the gun crews to leave the gun unloaded. Connect magnet control to the bridge." Milly said.

She reached down to her pulpit and pulled out a mini- 4th-generation AI, and plugged him in.

"Access Cortana's logs on Covenant ship plasma weapons, and download firing program." She ordered the AI.

"Working..." the AI replied. Its minuture compactness didn't really allow much room for creativity, so it was more machine than other AIs.

"Download complete." The AI reported.

"Initialize program, and apply to our MAC gun magnets." Milly said. "Target incoming plasma projectiles."

This was a risky plan, but it had been done before, sort of. Ther MAC guns were capable of directing plasma, but she wasn't sure if they were stong enough to deflect or disperse Covenant plasma.

The cruisers MAC gun's magnets aligned and realinged to match the trajectory of the bolts. They energized, creating a magnetic field.

The plasma bolts stopped, shuddered, edged forward, then back. Slowly, they were redirected back towards the ships that fired them. The force of the three MAC guns was to much for the ships controlling the bolts. Their guns overloaded, and exploded, spilling plasma everywhere, and shifting the ships to a new position.

The plasma impacted on the unshielded pair, burning through them easily.

The reamaining ships turned to open fire, but they lost the chance when the warhead from the destoyer's last salvo finally reached them after the purposelly plotted trajectory to catch the Covenant on surprise.

The nuke ripped throught the Covenant ships' hulls, destroying the tightly clustered formation.

The Battle of Corasuis was over.

* * *

(ONWARD TO 3,000 words!)

Jeremy was ready to start the fifth test after about 4 hours of work. He strode over to a panel, and tapped some controls. His finger hovered over the activate control, when a Marine rushed in, yelling, "The outer security system is down!"

Jeremy looked up from his controls, frowning. A moment later, gunfire started.

"Hurry," Jeremy said, "Into the ship!"

The technicians boared the craft, and Jeremy strapped himself into the co-pilot seat, with his college in the pilots seat.

The Marine was last to board, and the craft was ready. The craft smoothly rose from the ground, and Jeremy tapped in the hangar door override. There was a burst of gunfire, but it was unlike any Jeremy'd ever heard. He activated the aft camera, and there was a strangly armored figured, flanked by a pair of rebels in heavy ballistic armor. They sported strange look weapons, but they were dangerous.

They spat out lethal bolts of red and blue plasma, hosing the craft with fire. Jeremy glanced at the new shield indicator on the dashboard, and was pleased to see the shields were holding at 90 percent.

The pilot eased the ship out of the hangar, and they sped out into the night.

* * *

William slipped silently into the hall. He had opted out of bringing the entire squad, and instead, brought only his two personal guards.

He waved his hand in a quick downward slash, and pointed at the A6 control panels. One of the guards went over, and overrode the controls, and rewired them to rebel control.

William activated an old first generation class 4-AI. Extremely outdated, but would do the job. He networked the controls to the AI, and downloaded the command interface.

Security was shut down. Or at least, in the outer section. William tapped into the systems, and unlocked the doors in this section. Half of the squad would come in and reinforce them, after they fought through the UNSC guards William bypassed with a Covenant stealth generator. (Sounds impossible for them to have Covy technology, but if they can get their hands on nukes, im pretty sure they can get some Covy stealth gen. or at least jack some UNSC camo tech.)

There were bursts of gunfire and yelling. William quickly strode on, guards tagging along, eager to claim his prize. He forced open a set of doors with brute force, and deactivated the security for the inner testing facility, where his contact told him where Jeremy would supposedly be.

He accessed a door and strode into the testing facility.

A strange craft was rising up and out the hangar doors, with Jeremy in it. William quickly snapped his rifle, and fired pulses of burning red plasma. His guards also opend fire as well, streams of blue fire lashing out at the craft.

The craft shimmered, shaking off the shots easily. William was enraged. How did they have shields on this puny craft? But he contained his anger, and watched silently as the sleek ship rose into the night sky, and blasted away.

* * *

Odd expertly crouched, and on the way down, started spraying the Brutes and Grunts with precision three round bursts from his rifle. The Marines turned dropping knee, shooting precise bursts of fire. Marine stilled himself and shot a Brute dead with his S2 sniper rifle.

Before the Hunter-killer team could react, they were dead.

"The security teams will know were we are. We have to move!" Aeilta said into his earpiece.

"I know that," Odd irratibly replied.

Odd slashed his arm downwards, signalling for the squad to move onto the grav lift.

The Marines rose, and walked onto the platform. Odd dialed in the controls for the bridge level. The lift slowly accelerated upwards, and came to an abrupt stop in the middle of a swarm of Covenant.

* * *

A man nevously walked down a hall, past the the pair of guards. He knew what he was doing was treason, but he saw that the UNSC didn't have much time left anyways, at the hands of the Covenant.

He stepped into a room. A shadowy figure sat at the table, face obscured by some sort of light absorbing device. He spoke in a low rumble.

"Well? How is the project going?"

The first man wiped his brow. He replied in a timid voice. "Well... ummm... the results were, well... not expected."

"How?"

"When the subject was awaken by stimulus, he woke...well... rather aminalistically. His adreniline was spiked, and his heart rate was almost at 200 beats per minute. We think that his frontal lobe has been completely altered, and over time, his higher concience will be over run by his lower, priminal mind."

"And this affects us how?" The second man slowly.

"I thought he was for long term use."

"No... not quite."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't need to know. But... I suppose you will find out later... "

The first man shivered, and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

"So.. my pay?"

The second man looked at the first man.

"You already received your pay of 10 mil."

"Well, it is hard getting that kind of data..."

"How much?"

"Another half of a million."

"How about this?"

The second mans arm was a blur. But the first man could make out the cold steel gray, and that was last thing he ever thought.

* * *

Now, here's an excerpt from Eric Nylund's Halo novel, The Fall of Reach, one of my favorite novels by him. (Remember, **HE** wrote this, not me.)

He could not fight t

* * *

he enemy- he was severely outgunned. He couldn't out run them either. There had to be another option.

Hadn't he always told his students that when you were out of options, then you were using the wrong tactics? You had to bend the rules. Shift perspective-anything to find the way out of a hopeless situation.

The black space near Sigma Octanus IV boiled and frothed with motes of green light.

"Ships entering normal space," Lieutenant Jaggers announced, panic tingeing his voice.

Commander Keyes got to his feet.

He had been wrong. There weren't four Covenant frigates. A pair of enemy frigates emerged from Slipspace... escorting a destoyer and a carrier.

His blood ran cold. He had seen battles in which a Covenant destroyer had made Swiss cheese of UNSC ships. Its plasma torpedoes could boil through the _Iroquios' _two meters of titanium-A battle plate in seconds. Their weapons were light years ahead of the UNSC's.

"Their weapons," Commander Keyes muttered under his breath. Yes... he _did_ have a third option.

"Continue at emergency speed," he ordered. " and come about heading zero three two."

Lieutenant Jaggers swiveled in his seat. "That will but us on collision course with their destroyer, sir."

"I know," Commander Keyes replied. "In fact, I'm counting on doing just that."

* * *

**320 Hours, July 17, 2552 (Millitary Calendar)/**

**UNSC _Iroquios_ en route to Sigma Octanus IV**

Commander Keyes stood with his hands behind his back and tried to look calm. Not an easy thing to do when his ship was on a collision course with a Covenant battlegroup. Inside, adrenaline raced through his blood and his pulse pounded.

He had to at least _appear_ in control in front of his crew. He was asking a lot from them... probably _everything_, in fact.

His junior officers watched their status monitors; they occasionally glanced nervously athim, but their gazes always drifted back to the center view screen.

The Covenant ships looked like toys from the distance. It was dangerous to think of them harmless, however. One slip, one underestimation of their tremendous firepower, and the _Iroqoius_ would be destroyed.

The alien carrier had three bulbous sections; its swollen center had thirteen launch bays. Commander Keyes had seen hundreds of fighters stream out of them before- fast, accurate, and deadly craft. Normally, his AI would handle point defense...only this time, there were no AI installed on the Iroquios.

The alien destroyer was a third again as massive as the Iroquios. She bristled with pulse laser turrets, insectlike antennae, and chitinous pods. The carrier and destoryer moved toghter... but not toward the Iroquios. They slowly drifted insystem toward Sigma Octanus IV.

Were they going to ignore him? Glass the planet without even bothering to swat him out of the way first?

The Covenant frigates, however, lagged behind. They turned in unison and their sides faced the Iroquios- preparing for a broadside. Motes of red lightapeared and swarmedtoward the frigates' lateral lines, buildinginto a solid stripe of hellish illumination.

"Dectectiong high levels of beta particle radiation," Lieutenant Domminique said. "They're getting ready to fire their plasma weapons, Commander.'

"Course correction?"Lieutenant Jaggers asked. His fingers tapped in a new heading bound out-system.

"Stay on course."It took all

Oops... lost the book... Lets just say i left you on a cliffy... KK?

I pick up ltr when i find book

(4,000 words!!)


	20. Gunz, Gunz, and more Gunz

Disclaimer: I dont own these stuff.

unfortunately, i was unable to find the book, no idea where it is.

Im going to start a new story that's going to be sorta a squel, probably call it Days of Thunder. It's going to be this story where theres the main storyline going on, with an intertwinement of various little stories of the Marines fighting the Covenant, Flood, Forerunner Sentienals, and Rebel Insurgents. review if you've got any ideas.

* * *

Human and Covenant froze alike, caught by suprise by each other.

Odd's arm snapped out for the lift controls, berating himself for not expecting this and not reacting faster.

Just as he did so, a Marine lifted his rifle and started firing. The Covenant returned fire, and the Marines hit the deck as they tried to make the best of the scant cover of the lift while they returned fire.

Several Marines went down in the initial out burst, but the Covenant were so tightly packed togehter that every bullet found it's way to a Covenant soldier. Plus, they were in a circle surrounding the lift, so when they returned fire, most of their shots hit their own.

Odd lobbed a grenade into the midst of a group of grunts, tearing them apart in a splash of gore. The Covenant retreated backwards to the edge of the room, taking cover behind the supplie crates, right when the lift mechanism finally kicked in, and went up a level.

Odd surveyed the marines around him. Of the original 50 that landed in the Pelicans with him, only 20 or so were left.

Suddenly, the ship started shaking just a little bit.

The ship's engines rumbled louder and louder.

There was a sudden feeling of vertigo, which Odd identified as the ship exiting Slipspace.

"Odd. The ship just dropped out of Slipspace Transition, and is headed for a human-held planet, Corasis. From what I can tell from their communications, an earlier strike fleet was supposed to have cleared out the human defences, but failed. Now this fleet of around 12 has to do the clean up." Aelita said/

"12? That many ships? How many were sent in the first wave?"

"I can't tell. The Covenant translation has some holes in it, but I guess around 60 to 70 ships."

"60 to 70 ships? Why did they send such a large fleet? I mean, Corasis isn't a strategically located planet, and it isn't a major colony. It only has about 1.8 million people."

"I don't know. But the defences are extremely crippled. Only one single ship was left, and it took heavy damage. The _Stalingrad II_. One orbital MAC cannon is still functioning, but barely."

Odd sighed and checked over his rifle. It was sort of a reflexive thing, drilled into Odd in his training.

* * *

Ulrich peered over the rubble. A splash of enemy fire washed over his head. Ulrich hastily ducked down again. If Ulrich was in this situation in a UNSC supported reigon, he would've called in air support, a couple of Hornets to take care of the insurgents with minimal collateral damage.

Unfortunately, he was in hostile territory, completely cut off from air support. He'd just got a message from the waystation in orbit that they were not going to risk any more lives in sending down air units.

Ulrich lobbed a grenade over his head, hoping for a lucky hit. He heard the 'nade ping off the ground once, twice, then thrice.

Nothing. No explosion. Absolutely nothing at all.

That's when Ulrich's own grenade bounced into his lap. Ulrich realized with shock what the rebels did. They'd grabbed the grenade, and stuffed a grenade pin back into the grenade, stopping the fuse from goin off. Then, they threw it back, the pin pulled. Ulrich managed to kick it over his head again, soccer style. This time, there was a resounding boom.

Shrapnel and debris rained down from overhead, thrown up by the explosion.

Ulrich swore to himself. If they were pinned to for too long, an aerial attack could be sent to destroy them.

Ulrich made a split second decision and jumped back into the Warthog. He clicked on his COMlink.

"Everybody, listen up. We're going to break some regulations here and just mow 'em down under our wheels. If you're in the back, concentrate on the rebels in the builds. If you're in the front, hit the guys on ground level. Got it?"

"Sir, yes Sir!" the soldiers unaminously replied.

"Let's go go go!"

The Marine in Ulrich's Warthog floored the pedal, and the Warthog shot forward. Bullets peppered the Warthog's armor, but it held togther as they raced across the market square. Ulrich could hear the roar of the Warthogs behind them gunning their engines, following in suit.

Ulrich switched to full auto, and sprayed randomly across the rebel line. The Warthog gunner yelled a warcry, chaingun roaring in response to the enemy fire, spitting out plumes of death.

The Warthog bounced across the rough, cratered road, and raced toward the otherside, which was barricaded by a wood/steel fence. Ulrich braced himself and hunched over, so the debris from the barricade would just wash over the windshield.

The 'Hog slammed into the gate, splintering it in half. The impacted jarred the whole vehicle, but they kept on driving. Some rebels who weren't fast enough were sucked in under the 'Hog's massive tires, and spat out on the otherside. the other rebels were gunned down as they ran.

Ulrich waved the Warthog to a stop. They would secure the market place square, and turn it into an outpost to regulate transportation coming in and out of the square.

_An hour later..._

APC Warthogs rumbled into the market square, discharging from their backs squads of Marines carrying crates of ammo and supplies. The market square was a flurry of activity, Marines and PDF troopers running back and forth. Within the short hour, the square was transformed into a base of operations.

Ulrich surveyed the base, occasionally voicing a command into the COMlink. Several mean were clearing off a zone in the center of the squre, for a landing pad for Pelicans. One already was docked onto the other landing pad that was constructed, and the troopers were in the middle of unloading it. With the Pelican was a Panther tank, a smaller version of the Scorpion, but just as powerful. (Panther tank is my idea) A squad of Marines came with the Pelican as well as some more crates of supplies.

Another landing zone was cleared out for Hornets. Two of the agile attack craft already sat on the rectangular pad. Marines were busy outfitting the Hornets with various heavy/ranged support weapon systems.

Ulrich was glad that the command station on Corasis had agreed to assist the embattled Marines. The air support would be of much use to Ulrich in both defending the bases, and destroying heavy counter-resistance made by the rebels. FLEETCOM had sent them a message though. They had politely said to finish up on Corasis and then get the hell back onto the front lines, quote " We have a war to fight".

Blue 4 belly-crawled on the ground, shifting from shadow to shadow in the early evening. He was careful not to move too fast, or his camoflauge system built into his suit wouldn't be able to compensate. He managed to crawl all the way into the inner wall, past all the empty bunkers. The Spartan team and the Marine force had given the citidel a thorough pounding. Blue 2 had even ordered in a Scorpion tank here to start bombarding the place, as well as a MAKO drone air-strike on the citidel. Chunks of masonry from the citidel surround the whole ctidel, but still, the ctidel held on.

Strangley though, there was minimal resistance from the fortress. The best counter offence they'd launched so far consisted of 7 men spraying the Marines with assualt rifle fire from the top of the citidel. They were quickly put down, and no one was hit.

Now Blue 2 wanted to know why. So he sent in Blue 4, the squad's best scout. Blue 4 crouched down by the inner wall. He worked his way around the citidel, looking for a weak spot, tapping on the wall to check for hollow points. Finally, 100 meters down the wall, he found a huge crater in the wall. Blue 4 tapped the vertex of the crater, and it started crumbling. Blue 4 unholstered his M75 submachine gun from it's holster. Blue 4 held the compact gun in one hand, and with the other , punched straight through the wall.

The crater fell out inwards. Blue 4 leaped through the gaping hole. moving the submachine gun back and forth. An empty side courtyard greeted his eyes. Blue 4 slowly reached down for his second M75 submachine gun, his eyes never looking down. He advanced slowly. A metal door was embeded into one wall of the courtyard. the only exit. There were no windows in this courtyard.

Blue 4 crept up slowly to the metal door, placing his hand on the door handle. He put one of his M75's into his holster, and adjusted it so it would quickly slide from it's holster if he pulled it. He pushed the handle down all the way, and poulled it open a small bit. He held open the door with his finger , and Blue 4 grabbed a flashbang. He pulled the pin, counted to 3, and lobbed it into the room. Suprised shouts answered the quick motion, and a second later, a small bang followed, followed by yells of confusion. Blue 4 kicked back the door, unholstering his second M75m\, and entered thee\ room.

Looking around the room, Blue 4 realized he'd stumbled into a barrack full of armed men. There were 30 men or so, still shaking off the effects of the flashbang. Blue 4 brought his guns to bear, and showed no mercy or respite for the men. The bullets ripped into the men, blood staining their clothes. One fell down screaming, clutching a bullet wound in his stomach. In less than 5 seconds, it was all over. From the Blue 4 lobbing the grenade, to the last man falling. Blue 4 calmly strode around the barrack, giving each man a dead check with a single bullet to the head.

Blue 4 policed their weapons, and moved on.

The secondary armory was empty save one person, Yumi. She had ordered everyone out, and took it over as a central command post. She donned the power armor that was custom-made for her, and was hacking some data files from ONI.

Yumi started loading up the ONI data files onto her datapad. Code flashed across the screen, white numbers on a black background.

As the data streamed into the pad, Yumi holstered the M9D Daigon gave her into her left hip-holster, and strapped the M75 to her side.

Yumi reached over to the locker in front of her and pulled out several clips of ammunition, and slid them into pouches on her custom-made power armor. (Think Spartan armor but less bulky)

She gathered up her long, black hair, and tied it into a bun, and donned the helmet. A pnematic hiss burst from the suit as it sealed the helmet.

Yumi slotted in the data pad into a special interface link on her gauntlet. Data began streaming along the left side of Yumi's visor.

She ran a self-diagnostic on the suit, checking if everything was working. The power field shield built into the armor was down currently, and need a generator to power it up.

Yumi decided to put that on the bottem of her list. Power fields were weak, prototypes to the Mjolnir shield systems. (Power fields are like bubbles, it doesn't shape around the armor like Mjolnir armor does, and it was one of the first shields made by humans. Again, this power field is my idea.) Power fields couldn't take much beating, and they would only block a few bullets before they failed. The only good thing about them was that they were remarkable easy to put down to a extremely compact size.

Yumi went back to the her ship. She accessed the weapon panel, and from there, accessed another panel on the other side of the craft. She strode over to this new panel. On it were several ONI classified equipment, including several upgraded shield units.

Yumi picked up forearm shield units. They looked like long, black, rectangles, but they operated like the Jackal shields.

Yumi also strapped on a CSU (compact shield unit) made by Jeremy, and slotted that into her suit. New built-in weapon panels went in, including a mini single shot plasma gun on each arm.

Optics went onto her helmet, and a new power source was put in.

Yumi sealed both panels, and left the ship.

* * *

Odd gathered himself up, and ordered the Marines to advance the corridor they entered when the lift activated. Odd placed a Lotus anti-tank mine on the pad, as well as a flashbang. This was hooked up to Aelita, who would activate the fuse at the right time. The plan was, as the lift was almost eye-level to the Covenant one level down, she would trigger the flashnbang, blinding everyone down there. The mine would detonate as soon as the lift descened fully.

Just as Odd predicted, as soon as the lift was reactivated, it descended downwards. There was a small bang as the flashbang detonated, followed by roars of fury from the Brutes. A few seconds later, a large blast was heard, followed by faint thumps of the bodies hitting the deck.

Odd nodded grimly in satisfation, and continued down the corridor.

"Here's where we are. We have to get here, to the bridge," Aelita said.

Aelita pulled up a schematic on Odd's visor. According to the schematic, Odd had to fight his way across this floor to the otherside, where the front launch bay was located. There, he would have to fight his way down the service corridor, and fight his way all the way back to the bridge.

Odd groaned to himself, and waved forward the Marines.

They jogged forward as a group, checking side passages, always on the alert. Odd led the formation forward, guided by the schematic.

They ran into stiff opposition on the way to the launch bay, but the Marines were able to put them down every time. Odd was worried despite the fast pace they were going at. They were going to run out of ammunition soon, and most of the Covenant weapons had fail-safes now. They'd only managed to salvage 2 plasma grenades, and 4 plasma pistols.

"Aelita. We're low on ammo and we need more guns now. Where can we get some?" Odd asked.

"Well, there is what I believe is a secondary-armory on your way to the launch bay. I'll guide you to it. But you'll guranteed to be facing extreme resistance, as there is a barrack right next to the armory."

"Anything else?" Odd inquired.

"The brig is here. I think there are some surviving human prisoners there, but I'm not sure. Covenant AIs are everywhere."

"So we'll have to fight our way to the armory, take the bridge, and rescue the prisoners."

"That about sums it up." Aelita replied.

Odd didn't say anything, and just continued his way down the seemingly endless corridors.

Half an hour later, Aelita told them to deviate from their course.

"The armory is that way." she explained.

The Marines continued, most of them bone-dry on ammo. Most were now hefting near-depleted plasma weapons now.

Odd himself had run out of ammo as well. He carried a needler with him, but was running short on ammunition as well.

They proceeded a long corridor. at the end, it forked both ways.

"The armory is on the right. The barracks are on the left." Aelita said.

"Got it" Odd replied.

He beckoned to the Marines, and they carefully and silently walked down the corridor. Odd turned to the left, and came face to face with a started Jackal.

Odd lashed out with his needler, but he wasn't fast enough. The Jackal yelled out a warning cry just as Odd caved in it's skull.

Immediately, Odd heard a flurry of activity in the barrack.

"Hurry! Inside!" Odd yelled.

Odd stayed near the entrance of the armory, gun pointed at the barrack door as the Marines rearmed themselves. The barrack

door slid open, revealing a Brute in full battle armor. Odd unleashed a tide of pink needles at the Brute. The Brute roared, and Odd watched as the Brute's shields soaked up the damage.

The Brute charged forward, swing it's spiker rifle. The dual pronged blades lashed out, nearly catching Odd in the side.

Odd rolled to his left, and came up firing. The needler spat out a few needles, and then ran dry. Odd rose to a crouch, and watched as the Brute wheel around, and charge again. Odd readied himself, his body tense. Odd was about to roll to the side when the Brute's head literally exploded.

The Brute's body fell forward, revealing behind him a Marine armed with an energy rifle. A single shot in the head was enough to punch through the weakened shields and armor of the Brute.

"I got your back, Chief!" The Marine called out. He spun around, and fired a tight cluster of plasma into the barracks. A pair of dead Grunts fell forward, and the Marine lobbed in a frag grenade, bouncing it into the back of the barrack. The grenade detonated, sending a Jackal's now dead body flying.

(the name Chief doesn't just apply to the Master Chief. "Chief" is just a term for the field commander)

The rest of the Marines rushed out, and Odd and the rest of them continued towards the launch bay.

* * *


	21. Forerunner's Blade

* * *

Disclaimer: nothing here is mine.

Milly look up from her command post, and activated her navigation suite in her pulpit. She plotted a course toward the dark side of Corasis's moons, Boldivia.

"M'am! Covenant ships detected on long range gear!" COM officer Lieutenant Hawkins reported.

Milly's head snapped up, looking at the main view screen. A lone blue triangle represented the _Stalingrad II_, and a single blue square represented the orbital MAC cannon.

12 red triangles flashed up on the edge of the screen, representing the Covenant ships. Tags identified them as cruiser and carrier class.

Milly stared at the screen, looking for a possible way out of the mess.

She couldn't just stand by and watch the Covenant glass the planet, nor could she fight them effectively. Her ship was a wreck, barely holding together.

Milly turned the screen to real-time, and stepped up the magniflication all the way up. In the center of the fleet was a large, bulbous ship, similair to the one seen near Reach, destroyed by Captain Keyes. Milly had read the reports. This ship could fire a tight beam of energy. This weapon was faster and deadlier than plasma, and extremely accurate, even at extreme ranges.

"Weapon's station, I want a full inventory on everything we have left on this ship. I don't care what it is, just that if we can fire it at them Covenant bastards."

"Aye aye, M'am"

A few seconds later, the technican replied, "All our Archer pod missles are spent, and the 50 mm point-defense miniguns are extremely low on ammo. No MAC rounds or Shiva's left. All we've got left is about 5 Cobra anti-single ship missiles left."

"Might as well open the airlock and chuck rocks at 'em" Lieutenant Hawkins said.

Milly sighed. Even if her ship was fully repaired, she had nothing to fight with.

That left her with little to no options.

Until an idea came to her head. Crazy, but it could work. If it didn't, well, they wouldn't be long for life anyway.

"Alright. Plot a course to zero zero five, and put some power into those MAC capacitors. We might need that shield trick again. Get ready for a full power turn at zero declination two on my mark." Milly ordered. "Are those Cobras primed?"

"Aye aye, M'am. The Cobras are primed and ready. They're set to standard EMP discharge on impact."

Cobra missiles were unique in the way that when they hit a target, usually a enemy Seraph fighter, it discharged an EMP blast, disrupting the ship's systems, so even if the craft wasn't destroyed in the blast of the missile, they were now useless in the fight, and could be mopped up later.

"Set the EMP discharge to maximum, just in case." Milly commanded.

"M'am, are you aware that if it detonates too close to us, it might short circut us as well? The range of the Cobra's only about 100 kilometers. We most likely will suffer EMP damage or other electrical side effects."

"I am well aware of that fact, Ensign." Milly siad curtly.

The Covenant ships loomed in closer and closer. Their lateral lines started heating red. The flagship did nothing, and just continued drifting toward Corasis.

"Mark! Set new course correction at four inclination five two at... Now!"

The cruise rotated to a course that would bisect the Covenant ships' paths. It tilted upwards, and executed a turn to face the Covenant.

"Full speed ahead! Charge the engines to 300 percent! Divert the rest of the power to the MAC capacitors! Realign the magnetic field of the farside magnets to a natural bubble around us. Target the Covenant ships with the remaining magnets, and focuse on the turrets!"

The crew scrambled to their orders, casting an occasional glance at Milly or the viewscreen.

The Covenant ships glowed red, and discharged their plasma.

A few of their plasma shots impacted back onto the Covenant ships themselves, thanks to the MAC capacitor magnets, and the rest dissipated into a useless blob of plasma against the magnetic shield.

The cruiser continued it's course headed straight toward the flagship.

"35 seconds to impact!"

The ship rumbled, as it's reactors slowly heated to extreme levels.

"25 seconds to impact!"

The flagship stopped, swivelling a turret to bear on the cruiser. The other ships backed off, knowing if they fired, they might hit their own.

"20 seconds to impact!"

The ship's rumbling increased.

"15 seconds to impact!"

The turret glowed a bright gold color.

"10 seconds to impact!"

The ship creaked and groaned, as it slowly shook itself apart.

"5 seconds to impact!"

Milly gave out some final orders, and watched as the turret readjusted it's aim. and contunied to glow brighter and brighter.

"Impact ... NOW!"

At the same time, the navigations officer activated a new course into the NAV database. Milly activated the bottom emergency thrusters, thrusting their ship out of harms way. The turret discharged a tight scilliating beam of golden energy, and only by 10 meters as the ship was suddenly thrusted upwards, by the emergency thrusters.

The cruiser tilted upwards, it's bottom deck scraping against the Covenant flagship's shield. The shield failed as the titantic superstructure of the _Stalingrad II_ rubbed against it. As the crusier continued forward, it spun so it's broadside was presented at the flagship. The Cobra's were fired, with a course plotted to enter the downed shields, and continue down the length of the ship, between the shield and the flagship, and detonate at it's engines.

The _Stalingrad II_ arched away from the flagship as the missiles detonated _inside _the shields, shorting out the engines completely. This, in turn stopped the ship's reactor's main use of power, to drive the engines. There was an enormous build up of energy, with no where to go. The ship seemed to bloat up, and expand. There was a fiery explosion, expanding rapidly outwards, untill it met the still intact shields. The resulting effect was a firestorm in a bubble.

The shields flared, and gave out. The raging storm blew outwards, consuming the Covenant ships with the force of a small sun.

The _Stalingrad II_ was no where to be seen. It had rediverted all it's power to the Slipspace drive, and they had jumped milliseconds before the the tidal wave of fire could reach for the human defenders, the Slipspace journey the made to the edge of the system, ended up about 10,000 kilometers from the explosion, where they discovered, of the 12 ships that came, 9 were still left alive, and functioning.

The orbital MAC cannon was doing it's best, but they knew it was a lost cause. With the cannon so badly damaged, they could only fire a shot per minute. And the Covenant ships were closing in and would reach the cannon in less than 50 seconds.

The Covenant ships closed in menacingly, as the orbital cannon struggled to get off one last shot.

The alien crafts' lateral lines glowed red, preparing to discharge lances of plasma.

The cannon swiveled onto the Covenant ships, and fired a single Super MAC round. It slammed into the lead cruiser, gutting it from stem to stern.

On the cruiser, Milly shook her head. She knew what was going to happen now. The Covenant ships would start from the poles, and burn the whole planet with plasma. The oceans would be boiled away, and the silicon heated so much that it turned to glass.

Soon, the atmosphere would burn away as well, and the Covenant ships would leave behind a glassed planet.

Except, they did nothing of that sort. The Covenant ships moved in closer to the planet, and locked in geosynchronous orbit over the planet.

"Lieutenant Hawkins, status report!"

"M'am, all decks and compartments breached. The reactors nearly melted down, but should be okay. The engineers say that the reactors need a cool down cycle, and the engineers have to repair the coolant mechanism. Armor integrity's at 10 percent. No more weapons at our disposal, not even a Clarion spy drone."

"Ah... Hawkins, I want you to pinpoint where the Covenant are parked over in orbit. They didn't glass this planet, must mean that there's something they want down there. Get the surviving Marines ready for landing action, and anti-boarding party action."

"Aye aye, M'am. Scanning now. They appear to be holding orbit over the central city of Corasis, Capitolis, which is currently under rebel control. There are UNSC forces there, but in small amounts."

"Affirmative" Milly replied. She sat back pondering her options.

* * *

Odd fired the Brute spiker directly into a Brute's face at point-blank range. The rounds tore through the Brute's head, punching straight to the other side. It's brains splattered onto the wall behind it, mixed with the greenish bluish blood of the Grunts. Apparently the ship was still in Covenant control. Aelita had been seriously strained when she shut down the life support system, and didn't notice the fail-safe. Only the sub-decks, and nonvital compartments were vented. The rest still contained atmosphere.

The Marines fanned out behind Odd, blasting away at the Covenant with plasma. Now fully rearmed, the Marines were once again fully operational. Marine snipers in the back armed with energy rifles and carbines picked off the Grunts and jackals who were stupid enough to not take cover, while the Marines in the front sprayed down blankets of suppression fire, hosing down anything stupid or brave enough to pop out of cover.

The skirmishes were getting tougher and tougher though, and the Marines weren't invincible. They'd lost 5 men already on the fight from the barracks, and several had serious plasma burns.

The human attackers were constantly being attacked from the front, as well as the back, as hunter-killer parties tried to root them out.

Odd carefully crept down one the the seemingly endless corridors, and paused by a door. According to the schematic, through this door was the frontal launch bay. Odd tapped the controls, and waved for the Marines, signalling to throw plasma grenades when the door opened. Odd crouched down in the front, holding a plasma turret he had acquired in the armory.

The door slid open with a hiss, and parted to reveal a fairly large group of aliens. The Marines threw the nades, blue blurs attaching themselves onto the Brutes, Jackals, and Grunts. Odd opened up in the front, drenching the Covenant with a spray of plasma.

The humans advanced forward, effiecently killing their leaderless oppenants. A few Jackals tried to rallly the troops around them to stand their ground, but they were quickly and ruthlessly put down.

Odd was about to move across the bay when a plasma mortor detonated right next to him, sending him tumbling, and killing 2 of the Marines. A Wraith tank supported by infantry appeared from behind a stack of crates.

"Charge!" Odd yelled, racing forward, his last Lotus anti-tank mine he had left in his hand. Odd one-handed sprayed the Covenant position with his spiker. Odd side armed the mine, and threw it like a discus ( basically like a Frisbee). The mine spiraled through the air, and hit the tank. THe mine blew on impact, destroying the tank and sending shrapnel on the Covenant infantry protecting the tank.

Blue plasma splashed over his shields, dangerously depleting it. Odd side-armed a plasma grenade and tossed it behind a pair of Jackals. The bird-like aliens screeched and doven for cover. One was caught in the blast, half of it's body vaporized. The other managed to bring it's shield up in time to deflect the blast, but was killed from the back by the Marines.

Odd fired controled bursts of fire from the spiker, carefully taking aim each time.

A marine standing next to him was hit by a wave of needler rounds, taking several in his gut. The man screamed in pain, and could only watch as the needles detonated in a pink explosion, splattering Odd's visor with blood and gore. The Marine's head landed at Odd's feet, still contorted into an image of pain and torment written all over the dead Marine's face.

Odd looked away, naseuated. He continued fighting, but he knew that this would stay in his memory for a long, long time.

* * *

Ulrich leaned out over the side of the Hornet. The pilot was a skilled fighter pilot, and was able to fly fast and low through the city.

Ulrich chinned the helmet controls to increase magniflication to 7 X. Blueprints of the various buildings were automatically called up by the helmet, and overlayed over the schematics over the livetime feed projected over the visor.

Ulrich leaned back toward the Hornet, carefully balancing himself as the Hornet zoomed through the city. It swerved left, then right, then left again as it zipped past the skyscrapers of the "blue-collar" district of Capitolis.

The pilot voiced into the COM "5 minutes to dirt!"

There was the sound of a series of clicks and snaps as Ulrich's team ran a pre-landing check as they tightened their harnesses, checked over their guns, etc.

The Hornet headed toward the city park, and landed on a flat area on the asphalt street.

The Hornets came under automatic rifle fire as it landed. A RPG zoomed over the Hornet, and detonated harmlessly 100 feet down the street.

"Touchdown! Hit it, Marines!" The pilot voiced over the COMlink.

"Go go go! Secure the landing zone!" Ulrich roared.

He pulled back the charging lever on his gun, racking in a bullet into the chamber.

The Marines rushed to take cover in the rubble, but already there were causalties among Ulrich's men. The Hornet struggled to lift off, and barely managed to do so. A marine gunner opened up on the rebel positions, showering them with a wave of lead.

The Hornet's engine's rumbling grew louder, as it prepared to zoom away. Ulrich shifted his focuse back to the battle. It was hell. Almost zero cover, with enemies surrounding him with superior cover and angles.

Ulrich tried to voice a command for the Marines to take cover in the buildings, but the COM wasn't broadcasting. He stood up in a crouch, and made a break for it for the closest building, hoping his men would catch on.

Ulrich sprayed random cover fire from his SMG one-handed while running, like in movies. The bullets went wild, but it had the effect Ulrich desired.

A stray bullet clipped his shoulder, sending him spinning. Another hit his hand, making him drop the SMG. Ulrich forced himself to ignore the pain and keep running. He kicked down the door, and dove inside.

Ulrich picked himself up, and surveyed his surroundings.

It was an auto-insurance office, and Ulrich dragged over a table to form a crude barracade. He peered outside, and to his dismay, saw the dead members of his team.

Ulrich unslung his battle rifle, and checked it over. The gun was wholly intact, aside from a few dents and scratches.

Ulrich sighted down the scope, searching for more rebels. The rebels weren't professionals, as Ulrich could tell, because they moved out of cover to examine the bodies. Stupid. No real soldier would abandon cover to look at a body in a battlezone just because no one was shooting at him.

Ulrich toggled the gun to fully- automatic. The 60-round clip would serve him well. The rebels approached, and the lead rebel prodded a Marine's body with his gun barrel. When the rest of the rebels were sort of clumped around the bodies, Ulrich pulled the pin on a frag grenade, counted two heartbeats, and lobbed it in the rebel's midst.

It detonated a foot off the ground, killing the rebels immediately.

Ulrich didn't move yet. He toggled on his visor to infrared. It immediately picked up a sniper in one of the skyscrapers. The sniper was probably wondering what had happened to his comrades.

Ulrich eased out of cover, and sighted through the scope. He switched back to single shot. A burst would throw off his aim, and if he missed, he would have to deal with a sniper in superior cover and with a superior angle.

Ulrich tensed up, and relaxed, and squeezed the trigger. The rilfe issued a loud crack, and the sniper fell dead. Ulrich checked his GPS to find how far out he was in enemy territory.

The GPS beeped and whirred for a few moments, and then a map popped up on his HUD. A green dot marked his location, which was about 5 miles in enemy territory.

Ulrich looked up to the sound of distant gunfire, and a loud explosion coming from a long ways off.

One of the Marine's COM crackled to life. Ulrich took off his own helmet grabbed the Marine's helmet and jammed over his head.

"Mayday! Mayday! This is Hornet gunship 314! We are going down! "

In the background, Ulrich could hear the copilot shout out " What the hell is that! It's huge! It's firing on us! Engaging evasive maneuvers! Acquiring missile locks!"

The pilot's voice came back on "HQ! Be advised that there is a-" A second explosion covered up what the pilot was saying.

The signal was abruptly cutoff.

Ulrich took off the soldier's helmet. Using a field repair kit, Ulrich replaced his damaged COM system with the one in the Marine's helmet.

Ulrich then tended to his own injuries. Ulrich knew that he had to find out what shot down the gunship, and relay that information back to the UNSC.

He judged that the crash site was about a half a mile away, but it was hard to tell as the sound of the crash was bounced from skyscraper to skyscraper.

He used the COM to trace back the direction of the signal. The blackbox aboard the Hornet wasn't broadcasting, but the Navy pilot's COM system still was.

Ulrich crouched and shuffled over to where his men lay dead. He salvaged what he could, and countined forward. Using his superior training combined with his extensive rifle training, Ulrich was able take out targets at long range, without getting shot at himself.

At one point, when he was rifling a rebel checkpoint's arms lockers, he found a sniper rifle with plenty of bullets to go with it, which made his task much easier.

The rifle was an old one, abeit a good one. It's scope wasn't zeroed in right, as Ulrich discovered when he first used it, and the scope's finetuners was appearently jammed, preventing Ulrich from readjusting the scope. But everything else about the rifle could rival the standard S2 rifle commonly used by UNSC forces.

Ulrich had just finished off a small squad of rebels, when he heard one of their radios squawk.

He picked up and listened to it.

" Be on the lookout for any UNSC around here. There are reports of a small taskforce that landed here and have successfully infiltrated our lines. They have taken out several checkpoints, as well as several routine patrols."

The radio fell silent, and repeated the message 45 seconds later.

Ulrich kept it clipped to his belt, just in case something important came on.

And a moment later, something did.

" This HQ to ground teams, we there are incoming Pelican dropships heading towards the silos. Prepare for incoming UNSC troops."

There was a few acknowledges in response, and then, "Sir! This is squad 23. We have secured the crash site of the UNSC gunship. But some of my men spotted a brace of Pelicans heading this way. Requesting additional reinforcements to our position."

"Roger that. Protect the installation at all cost. We're gonna bring everything we've got."

Ulrich quietly wondered to himself what the rebel-held installation was, and why it was so important. Ulrich also figured that there must have been some new developements in the war for the CENTCOM to send in so many extra reinforcements.

There was a rumbling sound in the air. Ulrich identified the noise as incoming Pelican dropships on approach. He crept down a side alley, and sighted the crashsite. But that wasn't what stopped him. What really stopped him was a giant, silver pyramid that seemed to have risen up from under the town square, smashing aside anything that was ontop of it. The pyramid was bristling with weapon turrets, and they looked lethal. Squads of rebels patrolled the perimeter of the object, and Ulrich counted at least 12 squads of 8.

Ulrich prepped his weapons for what was to be sure a long battle. As Ulrich fumbled with his gear, he checked his motion when he heard a slight humming sound. It was a faint sound, barely disernable from the roar if the incoming Pelicans.

Ulrich could fell the electricity in the air, gathering towards the pyramid. Ulrich looked up at the pyramid,and saw that the top part of the pyramid had split in two.

A large antenne-like device slowly came out of the gap in the pyramid. It reminded Ulrich of a telsa coil, only with a large crystal refracter like device at the tip.

Over the COM, Ulrich could hear the Pelican pilots.

"Wow... What is that?"

"Hell, I don't know. Chief says we should keep frosty..."

"Psssshhh... Like I need to be told that"

The humming grew louder, and Ulrich could see the electrical charge building up in the coil. Ulrich tried frantically to key in his COM, to warn away the unsuspecting Pelicans. The pilots continued talking, unaware of their impending doom.

"Sir, I'm picking up extreme levels of EMP and electrical charge in that thing."

"Keep going on this heading, but stay low."

"Incoming trasmission from HQ. Patching it through now."

"Boys, the Hornet's are in position. We're moving them in now."

"Affirmitive, HQ. Be warned that there is an unidentified structure at site 12-B6. EMP and electrical readings are off the charts. Sending live feed now."

"Acknowledged Omega-1."

"End of transmission sir."

"Alright people, let's move in! Engage all forces on sight! Pelican Wing Omega, assume Delta formation. Dump all fuel to back tanks, and open the throttle!"

The Pelicans dipped down lower and lower, trading altitude for speed. The pyramid crackled to life, and shot a dazzling green lance of energy at the lead Pelican. The lance nailed the port wing of the Pelican, severing it away from the fuselage.

"I'm going down! This is Delta-2, I'm hit!" The Pelican wobbled, and spun out of control, narrowly missing the other Pelicans. It trailed smoke, and crashed into the ground.

"This is Delta-1! Pelican Wing Omega! Break formation and engage that structure! Copilot, patch through those Hornets to me now!"

"Aye aye sir! I've got them on the COM."

"Delta-1 to Hornets, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear, Delta-1. Go ahead."

"Target that pyramid with everything you got. We need to take it out ASAP. We lost a Pelican already."

"Roger that. We're on it."

The Pelicans roared in, firing their 70 mm cannons and their Anvil II missiles at the structure. A ghostly shimmer materialized in front of the pyramid, protecting it from all the incoming projetiles. Then the Hornets joined the fight. They fired 102mm rockets at the structure, and the Marine Gunners target it with Stanchion gauss rifles, which could accelerate a metal projectile to fractions of the speed of light.

The pyramid's smaller weapons opened fire, shooting lance after lance of energy at the aircraft. The Pelicans dipped down, and unloaded their troops onto the battlefield, and disengaging several Warthogs.

Some of the 'Hogs were equiped with gauss cannons, and their gunners turned immidiately to fire at the pyramid.

Ulrich heard more on the COM.

"Marines! Get those heavy weapons on that pyramid already! Go go go!"

"Hornet-1 to ground teams. We can't blow their shields! We've spotted an infantry entrance at this NAV point. You'll ned to get in and take the shields offline!"

A blue triangle flashed on in Ulrich's HUD.

"Sir! This is Warthog-2! We've spotted an UFO (as in Unidentified Flying Object, not like the aliens) on heading two three zero, declination four. It's not firing on us, but it looks like a transport."

"Fire away, Sergeant!"

A new voice came over the COM. A familiar one.

"Belay that order. This is civilian consultant Jeremie Belpois speaking. Hold your fire."

On Ulrich's HUD, the craft's FOF tag winked on long enough to show that it was UNSC.

"Hell, Jeremie! With all due respect, Jeremie, what the hell are you doing here?"

"That pyramid. I believe it is Forerunner built. It's alloy construction matches known samples of Forerunner alloy. We can't let the rebels gain complete control over this structure. The consequences would be catostrophic."

"I read you, Jeremie. Our forces are currently trying to get into the structure."

"Affirmative. Belpois out."

The craft hovered there for a second more, and it turned and flew away.

Ulrich decided it was time to gear into action. He rechecked his rifle, and sneaked into an adjacent building that hadn't collapsed yet.

He cleared the rooms, and set up a sniper's nest in a window.

He spotted a UNSC fireteam pinned down by a chain gun emplacement. Ulrich sighted down the barrel, and fired twice, killing the gunner and the loader.

The fireteam pushed on.

Ulrich started sniping the insurgents near the entrance to the pyramid.

The rebels eventually pinned down where Ulrich was, and were directing some fire towards the nest.

Ulrich abandoned his exposed position, and slung his rifle, replacing it with his battle rifle.

Ulrich clicked on his FOF tag once, which would automatically update to all UNSC HUDs.

Ulrich sprinted and dove into cover. He thumbed his rifle to burst, and fired precise bursts of bullets into the rebel front.

He linked up with the group of Marines closest to him, and started leading them toward the Forerunner structure. Ulrich lost several men on the way up, but he reached the entrance in the end.

Ulrich nodded to the two marines on either side of the door, and they rolled flashbangs and frags into the entrance.

Twin muffled coughs followed by a set of booms rocked the air. As soon as the nades went off, the Marines rushed in. The front four Marines slung their rifles, and unslung their M90 Assualt Shotguns. The others thumbed the safety on their M6D pistols to "off".

A team of rebels had just taken a position in the hallway, intending to set up a machine gun nest to block the invaders, until the frags rolled down the hall and blew away the majority of the rebels. The men inn the back, who were carrying the machine gun, were blinded by the flash bangs, and were quickly finished off. A Marine grabbed the gun, and another slung the belts of ammo across his chest.

They turned down the hall, fight their way through the confined spaces. Eventually, they found and killed a rebel engineer, who was carrying a paper map of what the rebels had explored.

The map showed that the complex was a maze of hallways, and that the shield room was smack down in the center, ground floor level, and the weapon driver systems were located close by.

"Let's go, Marines!" Ulrich called out. "Chief, this is marine team Gamma. We've located the complex's shield room, and are on our way to disable the shields. How are things going out there?" Ulrich voiced out over the COM

" It's going bad out here, son. The rebels keep poring outta that thing, and I think they're bring in tanks. I don't know about you, but we're gonna be finished off out here if you don't disable those shields and weapon systems soon."

"Affirmitive."

The UNSC forces continued on grimly, eventually dropping their weapons b/c of lack of ammo, and picking up the older rebel weapons. Ulrich himself was running on an M1A2, an ancient prototype for the MA5B.

They navigated through the hallways to the weapon driver systems, losing several men on the way. Ulrich's group had taken several injuries, and he had reluctantly split the group in two, leaving the wounded at an easily defendible junction in the care of a Marine Corporal.

At the weapon driver sector, Ulrich and two Marines he picked out (the others were guarding the only passageway into the sector) and rushed the control center. Ulrich and the marines sniped off the majority of the guard, and efficiently dispatched the rest of the guards. They rushed to the door leading into the main control center, taking up positions around the door. Ulrich nodded once at the Marine next to the door controls, and he slapped his palm against a glowing green symbol. The door opened, and Ulrich levelled his gun into the room.

The room was filled with technicians running the equipment. They were not shown any mercy.

Ulrich grimly walked up to the central computer, and attached several breacher charges to it. He scooted back to the edge of the room, and clicked the detonator. The computer went up in a flash of smoke, now 100 percent useless.

Up above, the hum of the Forerunner weapons slowed, and stopped.

Ulrich grinned to himself, but the grin quickly faded as the weapons picked up again.

"Sir, there probably are several back-up stations. We'll have to either find them all, or take the power source out."

"Right. According to this map, there is a central auxiliary powerline running throughout the complex. The weapon drivers proabaly get their power from it. According to this, the nearest access station is over here." Ulrich said, indicating to a spot on the the map not far away from their position.

"Sir, wait a moment, if we knock out the power, all the other systems will fail, including the translocator pads, elevators, and everything else. We'll need to knock out the power here." The Marine said, tapping a portion of the map deeper in the complex.

"Alright. Gear up, and let's get moving. But, first things first. We have to take out those shield systems."

Ulrich and the pair of Marines rejoined the rest of the Marines, and the set off towards the shield systems.

Rebels poured out of hallways and rooms, attempting to rebel the raiders. They were quickly put down, no match for the Marine's superior training.

Right when they finished the end of one of the countless firefights they had engaged in, the COM unit crackled to life.

"This is Major Cartheray. Reinforcements are on their way. We're bringing in the big guns."

Ulrich distinctly recalled the name. A legendary ODST Major, renowned for his Covenant war actions and pre-war operations. He had only failed one operation in his whole officer career, when he was outnumbered 30 to 1, and he still took down three quarters of the Covenant forces before being forced to retreat.

Ulrich linked his HUD to a video feed from one of the pelicans outside.

He spotted several distinctive red-orange streaks of ODST pods, and the larger, bulkier Pelicans following close behind. He could make out that the Pelicans were carrying a mix of Scorpion tanks and larger, stationary field guns.

Ulrich killed the feed, and reconcentrated on his task.

* * *

I'MMMMM BAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

with a 5,600 word chapter to go with it!

Yeah, crappy so-called cliffy, but I didn't know where to drop it.


End file.
